


Upon the Place Beneath

by 5-door Wasabi (Ignica)



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: ...has unexpected side-effects, 1790's London, Angst and Feels, Aziraphale's Bookshop (Good Omens), Crowley's Lair, Crowley's Wrestling Statue (Good Omens), Gabriel is still a dangleberry in this, Georgian Period, He does have a tough job tho, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Never take a demon on a road trip, Singularity-sized demons and angels, Snake Crowley (Good Omens), The Arrangement (Good Omens), Therapist Crowley, but not of any main characters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:35:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 45,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23874790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ignica/pseuds/5-door%20Wasabi
Summary: Due to their overlapping but different skill sets, Aziraphale is better than Crowley at certain Temptations, and Crowley is better than Aziraphale at one supposedly-angelic Task. That’s not necessarily a downside of The Arrangement. It’s absolutely fine, providing that no-one Upstairs or Downstairs notices – and after nearly eight hundred years, what are the the chances ofthat?Right.It may not be the End of the World, but it’s the end of the Eighteenth Century, the world is changing far too fast, and an angel and a demon are up to their necks in Serendipity, even though that concept was only invented in 1754.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 48
Kudos: 53





	1. A Glimpse into the Firmament of Records

**Author's Note:**

> A fic cross-pollinated from two different ideas. One was ‘What if one of Crowley/Aziraphale was actually better at at blessing/tempting (respectively) than their Adversary, and they had to find out why?’, and the second was: ‘What if combat optimist Crowley accidentally became a proto-therapist before there was such a thing?'.
> 
> This is intended to be mostly light-hearted but will sometimes involve weightier themes. I have now pre-emptively tagged 'angst & feels' because that's going to be a part of this fic, and will get more important in chapter 8. Potentially traumatic issues will be given chapter warnings as they come up.
> 
> Est. 10-12 chapters.

_A Prologue in Heaven…_

Out of all the Hosts of Heaven, the Recording Angels in the Firmament of Records have the most transcendently beautiful names.

Not that anyone has ever heard them.

Not even God has literally _heard_ them, although She knows them all by heart. The names of Recording Angels are designed to be understood, but not uttered or written. Whilst writing such a name out in translation would not be directly fatal, even for a human, its intricacies would render all other joys of life adust — and if the mortal calligrapher lived to be a hundred, they would die blotting the ink on the first syllable of first word of the angel’s extraordinary name.

Even amongst lower-ranking angels, for whom time is much less of an issue, those names are too perilous to contemplate in their entirety.

This is because the language of the Firmament of Records is terrifyingly condensed. It compares to Enochian as a spoonful of neutron star might compare to a spoonful of sunlight, can capture an entire human life in an eyeblink, and is as close as even an angel can get to the internal dialogue of God, which is so efficient that it goes by the same warning euphemism on Earth as it does in Heaven: the Word.

Handling such a memory load is potentially dangerous, fraught with the risk of trapping the Recording Angel inside its own work, which can be so nearly-indistinguishable from reality that it takes a potent miracle to disengage oneself. No angel ranked lower than a Dominion can manage it safely. Despite the funerary monuments that show them as robed scholars, Recording Angels never appear on Earth, since the consciousness of even the smallest of them is incomprehensibly vast. Even if they could don a corporation, they could never pull off the trick of seeming at all human.

The humbler Powers and Principalities that can communicate with these intricate beings take binding oaths of silence, in case they are tempted to try uttering the language used for inscribing the Records. Wonder, and not the Devil, would tempt them to this, but it would nonetheless be disastrous.

But silence has its compensations, and every one of these mute Powers and Principalities is a deep scholar in their own right. All have individual fields of interest — not Earthly lands, but places in the geography of the human condition. There are Powers of Inspiration, Powers of Logic, Powers of Courage, and Powers of Art; there are Principalities of Penance, Forgiveness, Vows, and Quests. In scope, they compare to the Recording Angels they serve as bees to their hive, or gulls to their cliff-face. Their feathers are fringed for noiseless flight, like the feathers of owls.

There are so many of these quiet Powers and Principalities thronging the Firmament of Records that from a distance, they can look like feathers themselves, as if somewhere far above, someone is plumping a pillow the size of an interstellar cloud. So let us single one out: an angel named Vereviel, a hard-working Principality of Vows, on an Earthly date sometime in the late 1790's.

—⁂—

Unlike many other classes of angel, Vereviel and her colleagues in the Firmament of Records wore coloured robes. This was so that she stood out easily from her huge, nacreously-gleaming colleague, a Recording Angel so vast that it would otherwise be difficult to distinguish Vereviel as she went about her appointed Tasks. Though Vereviel’s feathers were snowdrift-white, her robe was a deep violet. She was long, austere, and tireless, flying to and fro across the vast regard of the Dominion she served with no more commotion than a floating hyphen. It was quiet, regular work. From the perspective of a Recording Angel, the sum of all human longings, fears, scientific discoveries, sexual awakenings, great betrayals, pangs of birth and agonies of death evens out to a hum — with occasional key changes for earthquakes, plagues, and the fall of Empires. For most tastes, Vereviel’s sequestered existence would be almost oppressively peaceful.

Vereviel, however, was incapable of boredom. Performing the same tasks, again and again, to the background hum of recorded human history was her idea of bliss. She was therefore disconcerted when during a routine flight around the perimeter of her Recording Angel, a trip that would ordinarily keep her aloft for months, she became aware of a faint discrepancy.

Vereviel halted in her patrol, hovering in the companionable but wordless focus that was the attention of the greater Angel. A discrepancy was unusual, but in itself, no cause for immediate alarm. Such things happened perhaps once a hundred years, and sometimes not at all in half a millennium. The problem was that it _had_ happened before, and recently. Three times in one century, and in the same approximate area? The Principality of Vows reckoned that that was improbable.

**> I concur <**

…agreed the Recording Angel, its huge consciousness synchronising directly with her own thoughts. And in the symbolic Conversation the Angel was having with the history of the Earth, something spun down, turning just slowly enough for Vereviel’s lesser comprehension to perceive it, in the iridescent language that must never be spoken aloud.

Angels of Vows did not enjoy discrepancies. Vereviel liked predictability, and promises, and she liked those promises followed to the letter. Her Recording Angel sensed this misgiving, as it sensed all things, and sent out a wave of carefully-patterned reassurance. It requested her not to be afraid, and then it showed her where the discrepancy was located: deep within Heaven’s accounting of the performance of Angelic Tasks.

It was not that the angel concerned — a fellow Principality, on an indefinite Terrestrial posting — had failed in his duties. Quite the opposite, in fact. He had started to over-perform. Only at one particular type of Task, to be sure, but that Task was a delicate one, and although he was considered an experienced Earthly operative, he was not otherwise exceptional.

Vereviel’s Recording Angel was in some remote and awesome way her friend, as a human might consider the sky or the ocean to be their friend. Her Friend was vast. Her Friend was powerful. Her Friend was great, and their astounding, flawless memory would allow God to prevail, even over a world marred beyond recognition by Celestial war, even over oblivion itself.

Her Friend could trace the ultimate causes of many puzzling events...but her Friend had no explanation for _this_. That in itself was troubling to Vereviel.

_**> My good Principality Vereviel, do not let yourself be disconcerted. <** _

Vereviel mustered all her concentration in order to reply to the Recording Angel it its own language. It was by far the most taxing of her Tasks, requiring the synchronisation of colour, pattern, sound, and even emotion. Her wings beat the air more slowly and musically, her halo extended until in enveloped her whole form, and within it, a thousand colours began to shift themselves into meanings.

_ > You have shown me a thing that should not be. < _

_**> It is beyond our remit, Principality, to say what should and should not be. < ** _

_ > This is true. How, then, should we proceed? < _

_**> It might not be beyond your remit to investigate if things are indeed on Earth, as they appear to be in Heaven. <** _

_ > My remit? My remit is to be your aide in the Firmament of Records.< _

_**> And elsewhere, if need be. I am not going to manifest on Earth and scare the wits out of all and sundry, but an anomaly like this needs an explanation. Besides which, you have not been to Earth for** _ _**…let me see now…a little under two thousand years? <** _

_ > But I cannot go. Even on Earth, I am still sworn to Silence. I can listen, I can observe, but how can I do anything more? < _

_**> Not everything needs a presentation speech. A wondrous gift may be given silently. <** _

_ > A gift? Not for us, surely? < _

There was a twinge of terror in the idea. A few devout mortals on Earth believed it to be better to give a gift than to receive one, but for even the haughtiest angel, it was an obvious truth. And what was a mystery, if not a carefully-wrapped gift? Vereviel had not wanted a gift, not all to herself. She did not know what to do with it, and her wingtips shivered.

_**> Of course it is not for us, <** _

reflected her enormous and considerate Friend, in shifting auras of viridian and hope and D sharp major,

_**> it is for the mortals Below, but I think we will need help to share it. Do you have any suggestions? <** _

To Vereviel’s intense relief, she _did_ have a suggestion. Only one suggestion, but it was, she represented humbly, an important name and someone she had known since Biblical times. Someone who had reason to take her seriously, someone for whom she had once done a considerable service, and someone whose signature colour she still wore: violet for the Archangel who was the Emanation of Yesod, the Third among the Seven Mysteries, and the Treasurer of the Vault of Souls. There was a pause, while she silently unfolded his Name — his full Name, of course, rather than the terse Hebrew alias he went by on what were (by angelic standards) his quite frequent sorties to Earth.

Something curious rippled across vast consciousness of the Recording Angel, akin to the wry satisfaction obtained by a human on working out a crossword clue that would furnish several unsolved words with additional letters. If Vereviel did not know better, she would have said that somewhere within its being, her Friend was amused.

_**> I too know Gabriel of old. Providence never fails, it seems. <** _

It may seem impossible that the Archangel Gabriel’s real Name should be anything other than imposing and authoritative, but in fact it was poetic and playful, in the serious way that God can be playful: a hyperbolic colour with a perpetually accelerating beat, a message within a message within a message, a chain of allusions that only the Almighty could reliably get, and which Gabriel himself no longer had time for.

It had, after all, been bestowed on him a long time ago.

* * *

… _and a Prologue on Earth  
_

‘An arrangement’. That was what the angel had called it at first.

Self-respecting demons did not make _arrangements._ Where other demons were concerned, they might engage in self-interested coöperation. With humans, they made bargains, pacts, or contracts — and although it was unsporting to create a truly irresistible temptation, there was no Infernal Law against tipping the odds in one’s favour.

There was also no Infernal Law against job-sharing with one’s adversary, but Crowley had an inkling that this might be an oversight. So when Aziraphale had started to use the bland and harmless word for performing the odd temptation himself, in return for Crowey’s interventions elsewhere — _all_ _according to arrangement, foul fiend_ — the demon had gone along with it. ‘An arrangement’ sounded simple, and easy to explain. In the demon’s considerable experience, nothing to do with the arrangement itself was either of those things. It hadn’t been for the sake of expediency that he’d first suggested it, but for the sake of knowledge, in order to answer a question that had been niggling him for thousands of years: _What if I did the good thing, angel, and you did the bad one?_

Would that even be possible?

He hadn’t expected Aziraphale to agree to try the experiment, let alone name it. He’d been more than taken aback when, despite its rocky beginnings, the project proved a success. He’d become distinctly thoughtful as ‘an arrangement’ had morphed, over the centuries, into the more confiding ‘our arrangement’. Occasionally, after a few glasses of something, the angel even referred to it as ‘our little arrangement’, which meant the impeccable bastard was about to ask for a favour.

It had occurred to Crowley, tutelary fiend of belated insights, that the first time Aziraphale had used the diminutive, a sensible devil would have cut his stick, slung his hook, and shown a clean (albeit scaly) pair of heels.

But when the scheme spontaneously acquired the definite article and a voiced capital, somewhere around the Wars of the Roses, there was no excuse at all. Anything calling itself ‘The Arrangement’ was a pocket conspiracy, but by that time Crowley had discovered two things: firstly, that whenever he agreed to do a favour for Aziraphale, the angel tended to _beam_ to himself, in a way that the demon could never classify as either innocent or calculated. Secondly, that when it came to certain temptations, Aziraphale had the edge on him, and that was fascinating.

It wasn’t as simple as sex or no sex. Aziraphale might have a prim exterior, but he was a man-shaped creature of the world. When it came to tempting ascetics into giving up their austerities, the angel was on fire (all right, not literally), precisely because he never brought up the subject of austerities. Instead, he had a system of self-exculpatory treats and indulgences that was more intricate than anything Hell could come up with. He invited people to share things with him, to be generous to another person, and then, by extension, to be more generous to themselves. He got excellent results from the smallest and least sinful of starting positions.

This untaught talent had a 17% edge on Crowley’s best efforts — which was perfect, just high enough that the demon could rake in the extra commendations without singeing anyone’s eyebrows. It was just a pity it wasn’t street legal. In the one of the fits of speculation to which the Serpent of Eden was constitutionally prone, Crowley imagined himself recruiting a baker’s dozen of angelic pragmatists, letting them loose on the clergy, then putting his feet up while the commendations rolled in. That wouldn’t do. He couldn't risk the remote possibility that some Downstairs pen-pusher might notice.

It wasn't all plain sailing: Aziraphale was hopeless when it came anything mean-spirited, and a disaster waiting to happen with adultery. It wasn’t the angel's fault, but he barely had to step over the threshold of a partway-broken home before there were tears, reconciliations, and occasionally dead giveaways like roses round the door and cooing doves. Crowley took to going through his own schedule and rating his future diabolical deeds from one to five, according to how likely Aziraphale was to cover the demon’s temptation record with glory, or bollock things up beyond all recognition. He could only imagine that Aziraphale had a similar system with regard to him.

This assumption was substantially correct.

Crowley’s misgivings about The Arrangement coalesced into something more significant in the declining years of the Eighteenth Century. King George III, on temporary reprieve from his tragic porphyria, was still the upon the throne of Britain, Napoleon had not yet ascended to a similar uneasy perch in France, Prussia was a growing power and the House of Hapsburg a declining one, and their corner of the planet had just gone through what philosophers had optimistically dubbed the Age of Enlightenment — which, as Crowley observed, was all very well until you tried naming the Age that was going to come after it.


	2. Little Goody Two-Shoes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not that an angelic Stronghold of Literature could ever be compared to a demonic lair — besides which, Pride is one of the Deadly Sins — but Mr. Fell _is_ modestly proud of his little bookshop. And now, he has a celebrity visitor! He should probably be delighted.

_Bong! Bong! Bonnnngggggg!_

In the declining years of the Eighteenth Century, Mr. Fell’s bookshop — which at this point in its variegated history was not actually called Fell’s — was an unassuming place, with a bow-front window of twelve panes, in a different building to the one with which the reader may be familiar, but it _was_ located in what was even then known as Soho. It was an age when the hardy traditionalists among booksellers still sold their wares in churchyards, on rickety stalls that were nonetheless dignified with signs: the Sign of the Star, the Greyhound, or the perhaps the Swan. Their competitors holed up small lanes or yards, at the Sign of the Crown, the Falcon, and inexplicably, the Sun in the Poultry (though which end of the poultry was never quite clear). But however humble of haughty the bookshop, it must always have its Sign.

Aziraphale had dithered over his own Sign for an entire year. The Sign of the Angel? Too obvious. The Sign of the Sword? Too martial. Crowley’s own suggestion, The Sign of the Sign? Too Crowley. Aziraphale had settled on the Sign of the Globe, in memory of that long-demolished theatre, whose fortunes had never recovered from the Puritan ban on stage plays. The copper globe that swung outside his bookshop, painted to his own (rather dated) specifications, was much admired by the local urchins for its colourful take on geography: there were griffins, mandrakes, manticores, and unicorns, a proper quota of sea-monsters, and deserts labelled _hic sunt leones._ Somewhere in the environs of the Euphrates, there was also a tiny painted garden, too high-up to be seen by even the most observant urchin unless they happened to be equipped with wings.

Setting a precedent for many later establishments, The Sign of the Globe also boasted a bell above the door, to warn the owner when someone was about to barge in and suggest that he might part with books for money. Aziraphale had picked the bell out for its particularly discouraging tinkle. It certainly shouldn’t sound like a gigantic gong, the sort that gets beaten by a man with gleaming pectorals, and a loincloth clinging on for dear life.

 _Bong!_ went the gong again, in case it had failed to get his attention the first time.

“Greetings to the Principality Aziraphale, Guardian of the Eastern Gate, and Patron Saint of the error-prone!” cried a cheerful voice. “Long time, no see!”

Aziraphale, who’d made up for lack of floor space in his book-lined stronghold by fitting very tall shelves (as well as surreptitiously making the ceiling two feet higher on the inside), was perched on a library ladder. A pair of superfluous pince-nez was on his nose, a copy of Athanasius Kircher’s estimable _Arca No_ _ë_ was in his hand, and he’d just been enjoying the bit where that learned Jesuit was explaining how Noah, being pushed for space, need not have taken armadillos onto the Ark, since that creature is clearly a hybrid of the hedgehog and the turtle.

Aziraphale’s heart was already full of foreboding. He didn’t need to look down to know who his visitor was.

The fashions of the late Eighteenth century were particularly flattering to tall gentlemen with enviable jawlines, and particularly unflattering to almost everyone else. Aziraphale’s visitor wore an ash-lilac coat and matching silk breeches befitting a courtier of rank, but he’d muffed it with the stockings and waistcoat, which were too pristine a white to be natural. A pearl stockpin graced his cravat, his dark hair was clubbed at the nape, and an amethyst seal glittered in his signet-ring, inscribed DEO.SOLI.GLORIA.

All told, he looked passably like a wealthy man in the prime of life, with impeccable but conventional taste — until you noticed that he was surrounded by a small disturbance in the air, as if the very dust motes were denied permission to settle on him.

Gabriel let the door fall to behind him with its normal tinkle, and stood as if waiting for a round of applause.

Aziraphale eased the _Arca No_ _ë_ back onto its shelf, safely out of reach of buyers, and descended the ladder, so as not to commit the _faux pas_ of greeting his superior from a physically higher position. “Hail, the Archangel Gabriel,” he said politely, eyes downcast, “who stands at the Left Hand of God. Hail, Harbinger to Daniel, Ezekiel, and Mary, Emanation of Yesod, Third among the Seven Mysteries, Treasurer of the Vault of Souls, and Patron Saint of Messengers, Envoys, Clerics, Diplomats, and, if memory serves correctly, Postmen.”

It was still a very formal age.

Aziraphale had been given no warning at all of what amounted to a state visit. He and Gabriel should have been meeting on the summit of Westminster Abbey, or perhaps St. Paul’s, possibly in the form of doves if the Archangel wanted him to lay the symbolism on with a trowel. As the hosting Principality, he should have been given at least a month’s notice, in order to miracle the droppings of actual doves from the roof-leads, ensure it would be a nice day, and arrange for the booksellers who still used St. Paul’s churchyard as business premises to hide their racier offerings under their trestle tables.

Gabriel’s violet eyes lit with amusement.

“…and Postmen, _of course!_ Unless postmen are beneath my dignity, Aziraphale?”

“Um, no! Not at all! I know you take very good care of them, in spite of all your other duties, and your indubitably lofty position, and —

“I get it, I get it. _You_ think that _I_ might think that postmen are beneath my dignity. That I, God’s own Messenger, might overlook the lowliest of my kind.”

That was the trouble with Gabriel. Under the hail-fellow-well-met condescension, and the resonant Messenger’s lilt that somehow managed (even in the 1790’s) to say ‘Listen up, all ye people!’, he was quite a clever bastard, and he did take his duties seriously. Aziraphale looked down at his shoes and said nothing. Fortunately, Gabriel did not pat him on the head, but the trouble was, he always gave the impression that he was _thinking_ about it.

“Oh, _Aziraphale_. Never get ‘cute with an Archangel.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” said Aziraphale, hastily.

Gabriel gave both the bookshop and its proprietor an appraising look. He had the knack of seeming pleased and disappointed at the same time.

“Well, I’ll grant you this, you’re good at human cover work,” he said at last. “Perhaps a little too good. But since you _are_ an angel, despite all appearances, I hope you wouldn’t _dream_ of anything. Your time has value, and Heaven can’t afford for you to waste it snoozing.”

That sounded worrisome. “Oh dear. Is there any particular problem with my performance?”

The archangel snapped his fingers, ensuring that no mortal bibliophiles would trouble the pair of them for the duration of their interview. For the first time, he looked slighty — subdued? Tentative, even? Aziraphale blinked the notion away. Gabriel was about as subdued and tentative as the Hallelujah Chorus.

The Archangel ran a fingertip along one of the bookshelves that Aziraphale had forgotten to miraculously dust. A single, vertical frown line creased his patrician brow.

“Nothing is wrong with your performance, Aziraphale. Quite the opposite, in fact, and I cannot tell you what a surprise that was to me.”

Aziraphale nervously smoothed down the creased tails of his own coat. If, for some ineffable reason, his premises _had_ to host a human visitor, he’d offer them a reading chair, but he was uncomfortably reminded that he’d never actually seen Gabriel sit down. Were it not for the fact that some paintings of the Annunciation showed him sinking nobly to one knee, he’d have his doubts about the ability of the Archangel’s corporation to even bend in the middle. Nor did Gabriel sit now. Instead, he roamed the narrow confines of the shop, inspecting the books with humorous condescension, but not much real fondness.

“Behold! The fruits of mortal ingenuity. Is it just me, or is the printed word proliferating like some sort of fungus? There seem to be more books every century.”

“The human appetite for erudition knows no bounds.”

“Hmmm. In my opinion, the human appetite for everything knows no bounds.” The superior angel eyed Aziraphale’s waistcoat, which betrayed a slight celestial _embonpoint_. “I guess you’d have more — ahem — _direct_ experience of that than me.”

“As you rightly said, Gabriel, they _are_ mortal. Their allotted time to try new things is limited.”

“Whereas yours, by contrast, is unlimited, but you seem to have shown initiative nonetheless. Have _you_ been trying new things, Aziraphale? Things, perhaps, we haven’t directly suggested that you try?”

 _God help me, here it comes,_ thought Aziraphale, though he had some unworthy doubts that She actually would. He fiddled with his own signet ring, a simpler one than Gabriel’s, without any sort of stone in it. “Well, being on a ceaseless quest to thwart the Beguilements of Evil, I may occasionally try the odd experiment — ”

“This is about more than one odd experiment, if ‘odd’ is the right word for it. ‘Interesting’, might be a better word.”

 _This is all wrong,_ thought Aziraphale. Gabriel could not conceivably be singling _him_ out for anything resembling praise. At the very least, it could not be the whole story, and the Archangel looked pretty sure that there was something about the situation that Aziraphale wasn’t telling him. The problem, reflected the hapless Principality, was that this was all too true. There were at least half-a-dozen things about his Earthly existence he’d prefer Upstairs not to know, and he’d have to stall until he got some indication of what he’d done _this_ time.

“I try to use the gifts The Almighty has bestowed on me, in every way I can.”

“You certainly do, Aziraphale. You certainly do.” And for the first time, the Archangel smiled. It was Gabriel’s genuine smile, like a cloth-of-gold banner unfurling above a citadel, and on an Earthly plane it induced a palpable sense of reality straightening its back and try to look less shabby.

“And that’s _exactly_ what I wanted to talk to you about, with regard to Despond cases,” he continued. “Ordinarily, I’d have sent down a signed Commendation, but I got an idea you might prefer me to deliver this good news in person. In my capacity as a _postman_ , you might say.”

“Ah yes, the Despond cases! As far as that goes — well, I do my bit to restore Hope and succour the despairing and what have you. I can only hope my efforts are satisfactory.”

“Hmmph.” Gabriel, veteran of innumerable mid-to-upper-level policy meetings, narrowed his glorious eyes. “Are you toying with me, Principality? Reveling in the secret knowledge of good deeds, and not taking credit for them? I’m not about to judge you too hard, but…false modesty is a sin, you know.”

“Gabriel, I spend almost all my time Earth-side,” said Aziraphale apologetically. _You_ _’ll have to tell me something about what’s happened before you start trying to wrong-foot me,_ he wanted to add, but what he did say was, “Is anything out of the ordinary?”

The Archangel sighed. The glory that had been illuminating the little bookshop — revealing that the ceiling could use a coat of distemper, and the shelves were not figured walnut, but painted and dragged to look like it — abruptly went out. Aziraphale could sense the whole place exhale in relief.

“If it wasn’t, would I be here? As I said, Aziraphale, Heaven has no issue with your routine Tasks. But what has been brought to my attention is a little outside the routine. Turns out there was a bit of a mix-up in the allocation of Tasks, so some other angels were getting the credit for your work. And once the Tasks are docketed under their proper angels, your clear-up rate on certain terrestrial chores is outstanding. I mean it. I know we don’t always see eye to eye, so you can believe me when I say I’m impressed.”

“Um. I see. How outstanding, exactly?”

“On the face of it, nothing outlandish — except that it’s specifically on Despond cases, and we all know those are tough. You weren’t bad before, I grant it — maybe two solid successes out of five — but these days, you’re hitting between three and four out of five, and that’s not possible. It’s not always easy cases you do best with, either. _C_ _’mon_ , Aziraphale. You had to at least suspect it.”

Aziraphale’s blood ran cold. For humans, this is a metaphor, but for an angel with an unusually vivid connection to the physical world, it was not. He went pale to the tips of his ears, and then slowly pink again.

“Seriously? The old blanching routine? I can’t believe you think I’ve come to _threaten_ you,” said the looming Archangel ominously.

Aziraphale somehow managed to make himself appear smaller, as if he were some species of cautious, buff-coloured owl. He blinked.

Gabriel injected several minims more warmth into his voice. “All right. Maybe that is how it sometimes goes, but cross my heart, not today. All I want to know, is — how’d you do it, Aziraphale? You can tell _me_. I can keep a secret.”

 _When it'_ _s to your advantage, and in a file with my name on it_ , thought the lesser angel grimly, trying his best not to show it. Even after a lot of intensive and exasperated tuition from Crowley, Aziraphale was not gifted at bluffing things out. He leaned against a bookcase, like someone who has nothing to hide, and tried his best to look honestly flummoxed. To his horror, the Archangel pumped his fist in the air.

“I knew it. I _knew_ it! There is something, isn’t there? You’ve come up with a new Method. You clever little Principality.”

Aziraphale’s bravado was cut off at the knees. “How can you tell?” was all he could reply.

“Because you’re doing the _face_ , angel. Like this.”

Gabriel stared coolly back at him through a very creditable expression of bumbling innocence. On Aziraphale, whose powers of camouflaging himself as something harmless would do credit to a mimic octopus, this look had deflected enough trouble for a hundred human lifetimes. On chiselled perfection, and the sort of teeth that no actual human would have for another two hundred years, the effect was unsettling. The Archangel laughed candidly. That was even worse.

“You really must’ve been down here too long, to try pulling that one on _me_. Maybe we should recall you to Heaven after all.”

This time, Aziraphale didn’t bother to hide his dismay.

“Because I could do it, you know,” continued the avuncular voice relentlessly. “You spend most of your time down here with your nose in a book, you’d barely notice the difference. I could put you into Research, with a team of thirty Librarian angels under you. No, make that sixty, and you can pick them out yourself. And no more poky bookshop. No more having to hand-cut the pages. No more _misprints_ , ever, since we’d only preserve flawless works. The big time, Aziraphale! Or the fairly large time, at any rate. You’d love it.”

Whatever interpersonal skills Gabriel might lack, he was a natural at putting the frighteners on. Aziraphale’s book-loving Essence cringed.

“Dear Sir. You are, I believe, jesting with me.”

“Indeed. You’d love it like a hellfire canapé.” Gabriel wagged a beringed forefinger at him. DEO.SOLI.GLORIA, flashed the motto in his amethyst signet. “I like you, Aziraphale, but I also know you. Don’t ever forget that.”

His point made, the Archangel got back to business.

“Do you know how many angels I command, Aziraphale? one million, three hundred and twenty-six thousand, three hundred and eight. I’m not saying that to pull rank —”

Aziraphale sighed, almost inaudibly, but Gabriel hadn’t held on to his job for thousands of years by being unobservant. Just by seeming that way.

“All right, all right, Aziraphale. I’m not saying that _just_ to pull rank. I don’t need to tell you how the world is changing. Remember when you were living it up — I mean, when you were _stationed_ — in good old Sumer? There were a million souls on the entire planet, back then. In three or four years’ time, there’ll be a million souls just in the city of London.”

“It can get a trifle cramped,” admitted Aziraphale, casting a glance around his own packed shelves. “But everyone seems to get by. Mortal ingenuity, and all that.”

“Cramped is not the point. The point is that living now outnumber the dead, but more importantly, they’re starting to outnumber the ordinary guardian angels, and God isn’t making any more of those. Heaven won’t be able to allocate an angel per person for much longer. You should’ve seen the looks I got Upstairs, when I told them that in a century of so, they’d all be expected to run their own portfolio.” The Archangel’s long-suffering expression was on the verge of convincing; he must have been practicing quite a lot.

“A portfolio?” repeated Aziraphale, faintly appalled. “A portfolio of _living souls_?”

The Archangel shrugged. “Salvation is becoming a numbers game. It’s not up to any of us to argue; all we have to do, is win. I mean, of course we’ll _win_ , in the Apocalyptic sense, when the dust rises over Megiddo and the Four Horsemen ride and the Earth ends in fire and flame. But there’s military victory, and then there’s moral victory.”

At last, Aziraphale’s clever mind put two and two together: the reason this interview was so ineffably awkward was not because he was going to get another Strongly Worded Note. It was because he had something that Gabriel really wanted.

“And if more souls end up in Hellfire than Heavenly bliss, our claim to the latter sort of Victory might, one would suppose, be somewhat moot?”

Gabriel inclined his head approvingly. “I _knew_ you were smart, underneath it all. And you can't keep something like this to yourself forever,” he added reasonably. “That would be selfish, Aziraphale, and we do _not_ do selfish. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to bring it to the high table, and if you want your name on it somewhere, you’d do better with a sponsor. And all I’m saying, is that you should seriously consider yours truly.”

“ _What?_ I mean, I beg your pardon?” Aziraphale tried desperately to imagine that he did indeed have a Highly Secret Method for thwarting human despair, and intended to sell it dearly in return for an Archangel’s good graces. It wouldn’t wash, not least because he had no secret method and didn’t want promotion of any sort. He needed to buy himself some thinking time. Gabriel was studying him with far too much perspicacity.

“Aziraphale. Even you must concede that, dreadful as I am, I have my merits: I’m a big enough noise to fend off anyone else who tries to muscle in on this, I already know that you prefer doing your research — in the field, as it were — and I’m more than capable of making sure that you stay there.”

“But you’d still want your name on the top of the report?”

“For the glory of God. But yours would come second after mine, Aziraphale. Very well, maybe third. Fifth, at least. But that’s better than it being two-thirds of the way down in six point Garamond, and think of all the _good_ we can do.”

The Archangel’s desire to serve God was pure, Aziraphale knew, and so was his wish to get one over on Hell. And so was his wish to be a mighty force in the hierarchy of Heaven, because the more influence he had, the better he could perform his own Tasks. Besides, it was no use feeling belittled by a creature designed to inspire the loyalty of millions, painted with God's boldest brush, in shades of hair-raising glory. It was hardly Gabriel’s fault that his Presence inspired feelings of insignificance, even in his colleagues. Nevertheless, among the many inexplicable decrees of God, there must be filed Her decision to appoint as Heaven’s Messenger a being who always had to preface his tidings with ‘Don’t panic!’.

This august Celestial being now stood silhouetted in front of the window of the bookshop at the Sign of the Globe, watching the activity outside as a man might watch the comings and goings of an ant-hill.

“Um. Well, I _have_ been doing quite a bit of background reading,” admitted the ever-cautious Aziraphale. “Spinoza. Locke. A few other things, here and there. But I promise, I haven’t come up with a secret method for helping humans find their way out of Despair, and not informed Heaven. I must be doing something right...but without understanding what that something it is. Call it Serendipity, if you will.”

He'd said the wrong thing. The temperature of the room dropped a couple of degrees.

“Aziraphale, is there any reason I should know what that word means?”

"I beg your pardon. It _is_ quite a recent coinage. _Serendipity_ : a discovery, by accident or sagacity, of a thing one was never in quest of. Derives from Sanskrit, via a quite fascinating route from Old Persian to Italian to French— "

“By accident or _sagacity_?” interrupted Gabriel. It did not do to flaunt one’s scholarship to an Archangel. “And which particular method do you favour?”

Aziraphale went pale all over again. “Oh, accident, of course. Happy accident all the way. Much easier than thinking, I find, and all you generally have to do is wait. The only trouble is, things sometimes work for no clear reason.”

“I get it,” said Gabriel, radiating alarming amounts of reassurance. “You’ve been playing things by ear, and that’s not good. But there’s no need to pull out your pin feathers —”

— _we_ _’ll do that for you,_ supplied Aziraphale’s mind unhelpfully, but what he actually said was: “All I want to do is the right thing.”

“Not only is it the right thing, Aziraphale, it’s the intelligent thing. It’s easier to come up with ways of making humans miserable than it is to knock them into some semblance of constructive gratitude. Hell has the easy job, so it’s a good thing that we are smarter. Not to mention that God’s on _our_ side.”

“Or, perhaps, _vice versa_ ,” murmured Aziraphale, giving _‘vi-ce’_ two scholarly syllables.

Gabriel caught sight of his own reflection in the window glass, and adjusted the mathematical precision of his cravat. “Did I renew your permission to get ‘cute with me? Because I do not recall doing that.”

“Your pardon, it must be the stress — I mean, the tremendous honour of your unexpected presence. And it is a human belief that, for doubtless Ineffable reasons, important discoveries are sometimes bestowed upon those of little account.”

“Naturally. Otherwise, God wouldn’t have made some of us of little account.” Without warning, Gabriel turned on his silken heel, and pulled a book from the shelf behind him. His choice of book looked spontaneous and random, but the thing about Higher Angels was that they had eyes in the back of their heads (to be candid, they had eyes _everywhere_ ), even if their human corporations kept them well-concealed.

“ ‘ _Heaven and its Wonders, and Hell From Things Heard and Seen_ _’_. Hey, I’ve actually heard of this one! A situation comedy by some screwball Swede. Best thing is, he’s been Heavenside for decades now and he still can’t get his head round how _completely wrong_ he was. About _everything!_ You know, I’ve always intended to read this. Mind if I borrow a copy?”

 _We are not a lending library_ , screamed Aziraphale internally, like booksellers down the ages, but what he said was, “Do help yourself to whatever may help assist you in your Holy Purpose.”

“Thanks…and I don’t suppose you’ve got it in the original?” Gabriel raised an eyebrow at Aziraphale’s expression. “I know I don’t come Earthside that often, Principality, but I _can_ read Latin. I don’t even need to say the words out loud.”

“All that I possess is the property of Heaven,” replied Aziraphale miserably. He glanced up at one of his uppermost shelves, snapped his fingers, and miracled his prized 1758 copy of Emmanuel Swedenborg’s _De Caelo et Eius Mirabilibus et de Inferno, ex Auditis et Visis_ into Gabriel’s waiting hand. “It’s a signed first edition. Just so you know.”

Gabriel already knew, and well in advance of this visit, Aziraphale was almost certain. The Archangel had probably done a sweep of Heaven’s authors for anyone who’d ever signed a book for a certain apparently-English bibliophile. Gabriel was inclined to such manoeuvres, to keep his subordinates on their toes. But it did not escape Aziraphale that it also gave Gabriel a plausible reason for his visit — just supposing anyone, or Anyone, were to inquire.

An archangelic chuckle. “Oh, I’m not going to deprive you of it. Quite the opposite.”

Gabriel didn’t even bother to snap his fingers, but Aziraphale felt the miracle all the same. Without a flash of light or any fanfare, _De Caelo_ was back on the shelf again — whilst remaining in Gabriel’s hand. Neither book was a copy. They were the same object, existing in two places at once. An open-ended bilocation was a paradox that would wipe out Aziraphale’s miracle budget for months, and bringing any physical object into Heaven was utterly beyond him, but an Archangel had no such concerns.

“There,” said Gabriel with satisfaction, ‘now we’ve _both_ got the original. Take very good care of it, Aziraphale," he added meaningfully. "I’m sure you check on all your clutter regularly.”

And with that, Aziraphale’s lofty visitor took his leave, with a first edition of _De Caelo et Eius Mirabilibus et de Inferno, ex Auditis et Visis_ tucked under one brocaded arm. Or at least, he opened the door of the bookshop and stepped through it, but Aziraphale could see that beyond it was not the bustle of the street, but the pristine glare of Heaven. Gabriel might, on a theoretical level, be concerned with the mass salvation of souls, but he was less than keen on rubbing shoulders with the humans that contained them. At least that meant he spent not a minute longer on Earth than was needed to carry out Heaven’s business.

 _Bonnggg!_ intoned the doorbell behind him, like a portent of something — if not Doom, exactly, then quite serious inconvenience.

Aziraphale glared at it.

“And you can shut up too,” he snapped.

—⁂—

Once he was quite sure that he no longer had the honour of Gabriel’s presence, and the Archangelic warding on his shop has dispelled itself, Aziraphale was on the move. It was somewhat late in the day to pay Crowley’s place an unannounced visit — no demon favours unannounced visits, however much they enjoy popping up without warning themselves — but this was urgent. He scrabbled in his desk drawer for a very important object, being careful not to use any miraculous power to find it. Crowley’s place didn’t have a key, or at least, not a key he was comfortable with Aziraphale having a copy of. Crowley’s place had a _ticket._

Once he had found this ticket, it was time for a touch of cover work. Aziraphale went to a particular shelf of his bookshop, one that had only come into existence recently, and was so low to the floor that he angel had to kneel. It carried a small but choice selection, and was one of the rare shelves from which books were sometimes exchanged for money. The precise amount of money miraculously altered according to what the customer could pay. Sometimes, that happened to be no money at all, in which case Mr. Fell might settle for an errand or two. The spines were narrower here, the bindings more colourful, and the books were almost all new editions, since childrens' books were still an educational novelty.

Improving Literature for the Moral Benefit of Young Persons had been Crowley’s idea, after Aziraphale got a tetchy note from Upstairs on the coveting of material objects, even if they were holy weapons in the war against ignorance. Say what you liked about Crowley — and Aziraphale quite often did — but the demon had a real knack for cover stories. Improving Literature for the Moral Benefit of Young Persons was a divinely plausible project, and it encouraged the occasional selling of actual books, without which Heaven would have been quite justified in calling Aziraphale’s stock a hoard.

Aziraphale picked out The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes, a tale for Young Persons in which patience, forgiveness, and literacy were all relentlessly rewarded, to the point where even the angel reckoned the author might be laying it on a bit thick. But it also happened to feature the earliest pet raven in the history of childrens’ literature, and no child on God’s earth has never wanted a pet raven. Just because you're an angel, doesn't mean you have no notion of what makes a bestseller.

Armed with his weapon of choice, the Angel of the Eastern Gate set forth into the teeming streets of Soho.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Problem:_ I'd like Aziraphale’s shop is to contain real pre-1800 books, but my knowledge of the sort of books he’s likely to own is not extensive. _Solution:_ frantic Wikipedia research. Here are the books he has, so far:
> 
> **_‘Arca Noë’_ (Noah’s Ark) by Athanasius Kircher, pub. 1675**
> 
> Kircher was Jesuit priest, an incredible polymath, and wrong about four times out of five. He was famously wrong about ancient Egypt, but he was also largely wrong about magnetism, volcanology, spontaneous generation, China (including its writing system…which he derived from hieroglyphs) and his quest to prove the Bible correct in every detail — hence, the Arca Noë.
> 
> The description of How to Make an Armadillo is just one of the [entertaining theories](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arca_No%C3%AB#Animals_not_carried_in_the_ark) in the Arca. I feel that the lavishly-produced Arca and its sister work, the Turris Babel would have appealed to Aziraphale (especially in GO-verse, where the world is indeed six thousand years old).
> 
> **‘The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes’ commissioned and printed by John Newbery, pub. 1765**
> 
> Possibly the first childrens’ book designed to trick the little buggers into learning something, rather than forcing them to learn by rote. Newbery’s name lives on in the Newbery Medal, the Booker Prize of Children’s Literature. Despite the clunky plot, Goody Two-Shoes has a dry wit and is big on kindness to animals. The likely author is not Newbery himself, but the perpetually cash-strapped Oliver Goldsmith, who was a personal friend (Goldsmith’s ‘Vicar of Wakefield’ is a pen-portrait of Newbery, switched from bookseller to clergyman).
> 
> **_'De Caelo et Eius Mirabilibus et de Inferno, ex Auditis et Visis'_ ('Heaven and Hell'), by Emmanuel Swedenborg, pub. 1758**
> 
> No words can summarise this work, which manages the feat of being heretical in every known religion including most forms of Satanism, but it has some interesting ideas. In particular, it states that even the mightiest angels cannot bear thanks or gifts, because their power comes only from God, and that souls go to Heaven or Hell according to personal inclination — which must be the way things work in book GO, unless all composers apart from Elgar and Liszt led unspeakably wicked lives.


	3. The Curious Mr. Crowley

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mr. Crowley is frequently Not At Home to visitors, unless you have a taste for dubious antiquities, and some decidedly serious cash. Or, perhaps, you know the Very Secret Password?
> 
> (Only one person knows the Very Secret Password).

Crowley’s place in Bloomsbury was _haute ton_. Crowds flocked there, just to gawp: at the amphorae, at the sarcophagi, at the statues of gods they considered to be very strange and very naked, and at the most glamorous and peculiar sight seen in London for years: the three stuffed giraffes that gazed down lugubriously from the first-floor landing, and were always in need of dusting.

Granted, Bloomsbury had come down a little bit since its glory days in the 1680’s, but it was still a damn sight more exclusive than Soho, and Crowley had a billet in the finest building in the area. This was not a coincidence. Securing his current lodgings in Montagu House had taken the demon considerable time, effort, blackmail, donations, flirtations, mysterious hauntings, and on one occasion, a literal beatific vision, courtesy of an angel who still had a few misgivings about it. Also, his rooms were technically in the basement, not that that was likely to bother a demon. Seeing in the dark had its points.

Glamorous though it was, Montagu House was at that time an unorthodox place to actually reside. It had quite a few long-term human occupants, but most of them had been embalmed or stowed in urns for thousands of years. A substantial mansion in the French style, it had been built for an ambitious intriguer who’d picked over the carcasses of great families in both the Civil War and the Restoration, amassed fortune and influence, died in his bed, and hopefully gone to Hell (Crowley hadn’t personally checked). The family had gone down in the world and their fine residence with it, and at the urging of various parliamentarians who found themselves very invested in the project without quite understanding why, Montagu House had eventually been purchased by the Government and refurbished. It was currently the British Museum, and it was thither that Aziraphale was headed, armed with his Museum ticket.

The angel had been thriftily re-using the same ticket for years and years now, altering the inked-in time and date as needed. The printed part of it read:

**~ This Ticket Entitles ~** ****

_Mr. A. Z. Fell_

To a Sight of the

**BRITISH MUSEUM**

At the Hour of ________ on _______day _,_

The _____ Day of ___________, 179__

_**No Money is to be given to the Servants.** _

Aziraphale was scrupulously law-abiding, and when he saw a rule, he stuck to it, unless there was very good reason not to. He never did give any money to the servants. Advice, gardening tools, bedlinen, medicine, sewing needles, saucepans, shoes, blessings, and the occasional Improving Book, quite possibly. But not _money_.

* * *

At this point in history, the London into which Aziraphale had tucked his little bookshop was a city without a precedent. There was no comparable metropolis on Earth, and it could not decide what it wanted to become. It was simultaneously a palace and a slum, and more surprisingly, it was in many places still a farmyard. It was also a theatre, a souk, a factory, a temple, a _bagnio_ and a slaughterhouse; a labyrinth of graveyards, and a maze of Garden Squares like pocket Edens, unlocked for the fortunate few.

Aziraphale, who needed no keys, was now wending his way though one of these gardens: the one in the centre of King’s Square, named in honour of Charles II, destined (thanks to the scapegrace Earl of Rochester) to go down in history as that King who never said a foolish thing, and never did a wise one. A statue of the mutton-eating monarch now gazed down on a flock of unsuspecting English Leicesters being shepherded in the direction of Smithfield, baa-ing companionably. Spring was now sufficiently advanced that the houses of pleasure lining the West side of King’s Square had hung mattresses from their windows all day, to get some fresh air into them; they were currently being hauled in again, in expectation of a busy night. A few optimistic tradesmen picked their way from house to house, to tempt their inmates into spending the wages of sin on pins and ribbons, poorly-printed ballads, bunches of watercress, and cats’ meat.

Once past King’s Square, Aziraphale reached Great Russell Street and pottered along, hands clasped behind his back, an open mark for London’s cutpurses, though neither he nor Crowley lost anything to the lightfingers gentry unless they really wanted to; Aziraphale employed a deterrent aura, whilst Crowley’s pockets were full of surprises. At last he turned in at the gateway of Montagu House, to present his credentials as a devotee of the Historic Muse.

The doorman was an astute fellow in a jacket striped in moss-green and mustard, with a bearing a few notches above the street-hawkers of King’s Square, and one of those sharp, high-coloured faces that cartoonists delight to draw in profile. At the sight of him, Aziraphale’s own face lit up. His gifting instincts had not played him false, and Little Goody Two-Shoes would prove an excellent choice for today. The angel felt a familiar, pleasurable prickle down his spine: in some adjacent dimension, his wings were stirring in the anticipation of Doing Good Deeds.

“Why, it’s Mr. Bamping!” he exclaimed.

The doorman made a neat bow. “Mr. Fell. Not unexpected, but always a pleasure.”

When you came and went from the British Museum as frequently as Aziraphale did, people got familiar with your face. Perhaps a little too familiar. Both he and Crowley had minor miracles in place to ensure that no-one remarked on their failure to get any older, but there was no help for being regularly seen unless you _really_ wanted to blow your miracle budget. People got to know you, and even to like you. It went the other way as well. For better or worse, Aziraphale was now _au fait_ not only with the life, times, trials, and triumphs of Mr. Francis Bamping, but also those of the redoubtable Mrs. Eleanora Bamping, and the three ebullient Bamping offspring.

“Come to pay a late visit to the Temple of Clio?” continued the doorman, in a deferential but friendly voice. “Or I do believe Mr. Crowley is in residence, if it’s…business.”

“A little of both, perhaps. I _am_ fond of the historic muse, Francis. Over-fond, perhaps. This world of ours seems to change faster with every passing year.”

“Try having a family, Sir. It feels as if only last week, nothing in the world mattered but that but that the girls should each have a cloth poppet for their Birthdays, and young Josie a spinning-top. Now the girls talk of nothing but seeing Vauxhall gardens before they’re at the sere age of twenty, and who they’d like to marry out of _The Mysteries of Udolpho_.”

Aziraphale smiled. “A little outside my field, I’m afraid. And by-the-by, how _is_ young Josie?”

Josiah Bamping, all of nine years old. Quite the determined little creature, as his father always said. The main reason why Aziraphale only reluctantly made human friends was not the brevity of their lives — one of his appointed Tasks was to humble himself before that brevity — but the temptation to have favourites. Because Francis Bamping’s youngest child could certainly use a miracle, and would never be first in line for one. The soft-hearted angel had put the boy’s name forward several times, without result; young Josie remained profoundly deaf. But there was no rule against using one’s ingenuity, and whatever tools fell to hand. The era was seeing the first educational works aimed squarely at children, and the Bamping family had had the full benefit of it, in a series of scrupulously shop-soiled, dog-eared little books for which it was not necessary for the recipients to be at all grateful.

“Young Josie is a marvel,” said his proud father, “and he writes like a little clerk.” A distant look passed over the doorman’s features. “When the scamp can be bothered to, that is.”

“Is something the matter?” Aziraphale’s sunny demeanour clouded a little. “Pray, Francis, don’t be stoical. You know I live for other peoples’ troubles.”

Francis Bamping picked unhappily at his striped cuffs. “I fear he’s going backwards. It never goes easy when he tries speaking, and these days, he tries all the time. Tries with his playmates, and won’t use what letters he knows. The wife and I understand him, but — but the other children do laugh. Even his own sisters say he’d fare better if he’d only keep quiet. He can’t hear himself, that’s the trouble of it, and we haven’t — I haven’t —”

“You haven’t the heart to explain to him how he sounds,” concluded Aziraphale, beginning a discreet rummage through one of his own coat-pockets.

“That’s the plain truth.”

“But I have a shrewd suspicion — Aha! Now _here_ we have the article I was looking for! — as I was saying, I have a suspicion that he knows it, all the same.”

Francis Bamping gave a start. “He does, Sir, though how you worked that one out, I can’t fathom. Won’t mention it with his signs, nor write it, but me and the wife can see it in his eyes.”

“I see,” said Aziraphale thoughtfully. “Well, I call this providential, Mr. Bamping. Because this afternoon I was conducting a bit of a stock-take — the travails of undersized premises, trying to keep a quarto in an octavo pot, as it were. Books get pushed behind other books, in spite of one’s best efforts. Would you credit it, I found another little publication that had been sadly overlooked and knocked about, and its cover quite ruined. I shan’t be selling it, and I thought that Josie might be just the person to give the poor thing a home.”

Aziraphale proffered Little Goody Two-Shoes, then looked down at his own shoes, which could have done with a polish. It wasn’t the first book he’d offered in this cause. That had been _Digiti Lingua_ , a little pamphlet on hand alphabets which (although he ’d given no mention of the fact) was a rather rare find. But the doorman was hesitant, and Aziraphale’s invisible wings drooped. Provided they were Things of which Heaven Would Approve, miracles were relatively simple interventions. It was not the same with physical gifts. One could be rebuffed, just like any other person, and being rebuffed _stung_.

“It’s not _charity_ , Francis. It’s more along the lines of an experiment in learning.”

Sensitive human souls could tell there was more to Mr. Fell than met the eye. Their conscious minds simply stopped the notion from taking a definite shape.

“I’ve never called it charity,” replied Mr. Bamping, detaching the book from the angel’s fingers, “nor will I, for I believe you can’t rightly keep yourself from doing it. With some men, Sir, it’s the drink. They _have_ to drink, and that’s the pity of it. Others have to gamble, or fight, or steal — but as to you, Mr. Fell? You have to go about the world, offering people things they might be in need of. And maybe, if that’s the case, I should accept.”

“Believe me, I consider it a favour. My regards to Eleonora — and tell your girls not to swoon over too many Gothic villains.”

Mr. Fell tipped his shabby felt hat, and the door-keeper watched him bustle off to Montague House. The popular theory in the Bamping household (as in quite a few others) was that Mr. Fell — clearly not the marrying kind of gentleman — had come into a dubiously-gotten fortune at a young age, but was ashamed of the origins of his money, and that doing good was his way of making up for things. From the glimpses Francis Bamping had got of it, Fell’s life was a most sheltered one, and yet he knew that this eccentric, bookish man was notorious for showing up in all sorts of rough places, emerging unscathed every time. The most sensible explanation was that in the background, some formidable guardian, perhaps a family retainer, was keeping an eye on the fellow. But in the corner of the human mind that knows its metaphysical onions, the part that prompts children to check under their beds, adults to touch wood for luck, and that responds to auras even if it cannot see them, Mr. Bamping pitied anyone rash enough to raise a hand against Mr. Fell.

Mr. Crowley, though?

That was another matter. The precise nature of the business transacted between Mr. Fell, a respected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and Mr. Crowley, a polite enough cove but rum as they came, was best left alone. Mr. Fell’s knowledge of the ancient world was second to none, whereas Mr. Crowley was an archaeological freebooter who was tolerated at the British Museum because he was rumoured to not only be rich as Croesus, but to probably have a few of that monarch’s knick-knacks knocking about in his inventory. Provided you had the right kind of spending money.

No-one in their right mind would try raising a hand against Mr. Crowley, unless they wanted to spend the next few months waiting for a non-injurious but humiliating misfortune to befall them, in some darkly whimsical way. No-one could accuse Mr. Crowley of being a crook, but he had a sharp look and a sharper wit and he seemed to know _everybody,_ though nobody quite seemed to know him. That sort of fellow could eat vinegar with a fork.

—⁂—

Among the curious things about Mr. Crowley, the fact that he was never seen in public without a set of smoked spectacles ranked at about number four.

The third most curious thing about Mr. Crowley was that he kept his premises in the actual basement of the British Museum, when he could have had first-floor rooms. This was explicable: his stock in trade consisted of all sorts of old junk, and although most of it was not to the taste of your ordinary, day-to-day burglar, some of it contained enough precious metal to be worth melting and taking to a fence. It was sensible for such a man as Mr. Crowley to keep basement rooms in a place with stout doors, night guards, and complicated locks.

The second most curious thing about Mr. Crowley was that he appeared to live in those rooms himself, at least intermittently. Granted, he was often away, perhaps plundering Etruscan tombs in Italy, digging for mosaics in the ruins of Leptis Magna, or haggling for cursed manuscripts in Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges — no-one was ever quite sure. Granted, the chambers were furnished, though in a manner so severely practical that it bordered on the monastic, and granted, they seemed to be neither damp nor cold.

But absolutely the most curious thing about Mr. Crowley was that no-one at all thought that all this was anything other than mildly sinister or eccentric, which meant that the most curious thing about Mr. Crowley which mortal souls knew about was how difficult it was to track him to his lair.

The door to Crowley’s domicile was next to impossible to find unless he’d invited you, or you thought continuously and hard about the its key. Not the tempting silver key he carried on his watch-chain, to bait the local larcenists into trying to filch it; the _real_ key, which was an incantation, and could be changed only by the creator of the door. Even then, if Crowley was in a really bad mood or wanted a lie-in, the door would simply not appear, even to a fellow occult — or arcane — all right, then, _ethereal_ entity.

The present key happened to be in Akkadian, since Aziraphale, who had so many languages packed into his ethereal noggin that he sometimes had trouble powering the relevant one up, couldn’t speak any of the tongues of Hell (they did nasty things to one’s vocal cords, and tasted like socks dipped in tar). But like all the incantations chosen by Crowley, who knew more poetry than he was willing to let on, it was a lurid old thing, and heavy on the hyperbole.

Aziraphale ascended the marble steps to the door of Montague House. Inside, the Museum was buzzing with history enthusiasts, getting their fashionable fix of manuscripts and marbles before chucking-out time at five. Few people remarked on the fussy little man who went straight to an unobtrusive door behind a statue of the Apollo Virotutis, and let himself silently in. Having descended from the cavernous entrance hall to the basement by what had been the servants’ staircase when the place was a household, Aziraphale found himself in a service corridor. He carried on to the end of it, running one hand along the plastered wall and vainly trying to get himself into a threatening frame of mind. Confound the demonic taste for the ominous, he thought. The requisite performance was so _silly_ that it got in the way of remembering the physical route.

The angel cleared his throat.

“ _And if you do not open the gate for me to come in,”_ he intoned at last, in a voice that no-one else would have been able to hear, even if they were standing at his shoulder, _“according to the authority of the World below this one...”_

He took a right turn, and then another one. The corridor became darker, and a few spiderwebs snagged in his hair. Aziraphale was not surprised when he came across a lit candle-lantern hanging from a nail in the wall, because he had miracled it there himself (the Museum staff also used these service corridors, so he eschewed the old _fiat lux_ ).

“… _then I shall split the gate and shatter the bolt,”_ [left turn]

“ _I shall smash the doorpost and overturn the doors…”_ [right turn]

Aziraphale raised the lantern to see better, and found himself facing a dead-end. He braced himself. Good Heavens, but the next bit was absurd.

“… _I shall raise up the dead and they shall devour the living.”_

He switched back to English, and muttered, “Though honestly, I can’t see how that could make any sane person _more_ likely to open up.”

Nevertheless, the door heard him, because all of a sudden it was _there_ , seven foot by three of iron-braced oak, adorned with a stupendous dummy lock that you could try picking for several lifetimes, because the true locks on a demon’s lair were not of this world. A curlicue of smoke oozed from the keyhole, redolent of coffee and brimstone. Crowley could never resist a last infernal touch.

Aziraphale waited politely while the smoke dispersed, but as nothing further happened, he was forced to knock.

Then to knock again, and louder.

“ ‘ _sszziraphale? ”_

Only once person in the world was capable of a _sotto voce_ hiss.

There was a creak like old basketwork, and series of slithery thumps. Then the door opened a crack, and a yellow eye peered out and regarded him with a look Aziraphale had trouble placing, but which he assumed to be irritation. Arrangement or no Arrangement, the occupant was still a demon, and no demon responded well to being disturbed in their stronghold. The eye withdrew, there was a discreet snap of fingers, and the door opened wider to reveal Crowley, dressed to the nines in his everlasting black, smoked-glass spectacles already on his nose.

“ ’Twasn’t even locked,” he said reprovingly, “luckily for you, since your accent would make King Sargon roll in his crypt, the mean old bastard. And I thought I told you never to come down here, unless it was a dire and unavoidable emergency. Ordinary emergencies, we use a rendezvous. You do remember what a rendezvous is, don’t you? Are you in trouble, angel?” He scrutinised Aziraphale more closely. “You _are_ in trouble.”

“Dear fellow, I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” Aziraphale wrung his hands, “but sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, sort of thing. It’s about the Arra— ”

“Oh. I see. We’re _both_ in trouble,” groaned the demon, then held a pale finger to his lips. He stood back from the door so Aziraphale could enter.

“At leasst come insside, before you tell me exactly how doomed we are.” He’d already switched to his more usual, confident tones. “Besides, I doubt it’s as bad as all that; you tend to worry too much. Once upon a time, I got into so much trouble that I woke up as a different person, and I’m still here. Most of me, anyway.”

—⁂—

Compared to the crammed and squirming confines of Hell, Crowley’s lair was palatial, immaculate, and obsessively organised, but in human terms it was definitely strange. It consisted of three interconnected rooms in the basement of Montagu House, and while the demon knew that it couldn’t be called cosy — he did not _do_ cosy — he felt he’d made the place work. In fact, it looked like the lair of a kleptomaniac monk, if the monk had lived long enough to snag such loot as a city modelled in silver, a verdigrised toe the size of a barrel, a lost panel of the Bayeux tapestry, and an Irish bronze flesh-hook that could have hefted a steak fit for Cuchulain.

Crowley’s furniture consisted of boxes and baskets in various sizes, the standout exception being an honest-to-Satan throne, made for a pox-addled grandee who’d declared himself King of New Jerusalem, shortly before he was consigned to the madhouse. Crowley had won the throne at whist, and in private he would sometimes sprawl across its tattered velvet, and practice looking debauched.

The dregs of the afternoon filtered in through the light-wells of the basement, and the departing feet of the Museum’s last few visitors clattered over the cast-iron grilles. It was neither cold nor damp in Crowley’s apartments, because Crowley didn’t allow it to be. For hospitality’s sake, the demon had lit a few lamps.

The Principality Aziraphale perched himself awkwardly on a crate beside a Han dynasty jade lion, trying to keep a decent distance between himself and a bronze group depicting two figures wrestling. One might, at a charitable pinch, have been able to pass the scene off as Jacob wrestling with the angel, were it not for the fact that both figures were winged, and that the one getting the worst of it seemed — at best — conflicted about its predicament. It was artistically accomplished and very vulgar, and Aziraphale was enough of a man-shaped creature of the world to know that these two things alone made it worth a fortune. Crowley caught him looking at it.

“It’s called a symplegma. An entanglement,” he translated, annoyingly erudite for once. “You know you’re getting somewhere with the English when they put their euphemisms in Greek.”

“I spent a century in the Peloponnese, I know what it’s called. I merely wondered why it’s on display. It’s in absolutely terrible taste.”

“ _De gustibus_. You’re lucky I sold the one with the goat.”

“Well, _honestly._ _”_ Aziraphale coloured slightly. “Is mummy-faking no longer lucrative? It’s not as if you need the money to live on.”

Crowley crossed his left ankle over his right knee, revealing a weakness for cut-steel shoe buckles, and also for black-and-grey striped stockings that flattered his lean calves but were (not that he’d admit it) no longer the very button on Fashion’s changeable cap.

“Now _there_ speaks someone who’s never tried being sinful on a budget. Let me tell you, angel, it turns people off. You can miracle yourself rich, or you can earn it from the sweat of your brow, and frankly the last one’s more fun. Besides, it’s not as if I’m rooking anyone who can’t afford it,” added the demon defensively. It would, he reflected, have scored him more points with Hell if he had. He didn’t need a bloody angel to lecture him on permissible mischief.

The day Crowley first heard the phrase ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’, some time around 1720, he’d got tipsy on the possibilities. Being an actual antiquary required a more learned persona than he was comfortable with, but the flashy Curiosities business was a perfect fit: the clientele was rich, undiscriminating, and extraordinarily competitive. You could literally sell the buggers _anything_ . Stuffed crocodiles, old potsherds, shrunken heads, sharks ’ teeth, obsidian mirrors, witch-bottles, Fiji mermaids — the works. Crowley’s own contribution to the field had been sensibly-priced Egyptian mummies, for which the demand was so high that he’d founded a small workshop to cobble the things together from soup bones, bandages, bitumen, _papier mache_ , and carious human teeth purchased at a discount rate from a local dentist, just in case anyone was tempted to start unwrapping them. It was an unnecessary precaution, for as Crowley warned his wide-eyed buyers, anyone who unwrapped a mummy for full inspection ran the risk of unleashing a curse. No-one suspected a thing until 1932, at which point the original buyers were unlikely to ask for their money back.

Of course, Crowley also dealt in the genuine stuff. He was a discreet but highly-appreciated donor to the Museum, in terms of artifacts, the occasional demonic miracle, and most importantly of all, serious cash. And if the Museum had so far rescued from destruction a number of books to which a certain angel was sentimentally attached — including the Lindisfarne Gospels, Beowulf, and the works of the Venerable Bede — then that was pure coincidence.

It was not because, a few years earlier, and dressed like the Marquis de Sade’s flashy cousin, he’d sauntered into the Bastille and rescued a certain personage from the guillotine.

Crowley sometimes suspected that Aziraphale had set the encounter up from the start, weltering in the Bastille’s chains like Andromeda on her rock — except that it wasn’t Perseus the angel had been waiting for, but his humble serpent. Some other part of Crowley knew that Aziraphale, though blazingly clever, was exactly stupid enough to drop in on a Revolution radiating peace, goodwill, and an appreciation of fancy pastry. But that would mean acknowledging that there’d been no set-up, and that Aziraphale’s metaphysical exclamation of ‘Decapitation? _And_ paperwork? Oh, _bother!_ _’,_ was capable of summoning Crowley from as far away as Nice.

And now, it seemed, the angel was in trouble yet again. When would a sensible devil learn not to tangle with him?

 _Never,_ Crowley knew. He had every reason to suspect that he wasn’t a sensible devil, and therefore, that he would never, ever learn.

“If you’ve had enough time browsing my stock,” he said, “I believe there’s a human saying that a problem shared is a problem doubled. Something along those lines, anyway. So out with it.”

Aziraphale took a deep breath. “Well. You see. Um. We — not that I’m solely blaming you for this, you understand — we seem to have inadvertently attracted the attention of the Archangel Gabriel…”

—⁂—

  
  


The unexpected visit of The Emanation of Yesod, Third among the Seven Mysteries, and in Crowley’s opinion (not that they’d ever been formally introduced) Heaven’s absolute Tosspot-in-Chief to Aziraphale’s little bookshop wasn’t the worst news the demon had ever been given. Since it wasn’t the literal End of the World, it wasn’t the worst news he feared he’d ever get, either, but it still gave him a nasty jolt. For the past few years, he’d been coasting on the kudos he’d got for supposedly fomenting the French Revolution. Perhaps he’d got complacent.

In the reign of Good Queen Bess, Crowley had confidently told Aziraphale that he was sure neither Heaven nor Hell gave a fig how their respective Tasks got done. He’d been so sure of that, he’d just _possibly_ mislaid the very thorough List of Instructions for Tackling Despond the angel had later provided for him. All right, he could remember about half of it, but since every last Instruction had proven useless in the field, he’d finally chucked the bloody list, and — to use a human figure of speech — simply winged it.

A human might break this news with an apology, but as a demon, Crowley knew better. _Never_ apologise, never explain, always start off from the premise that the injured party is you, and work your way round to the final admission by inches.

“Well, this is jusst marvellousss,” he hissed. It’s no easy task to drawl and hiss at the same time, but Crowley was an expert. “Ssssimply tremendousss. Makes my decade, which is no ssssmall feat, considering that it included the Hundred Days’ Terror and a certain incident in the Bastille for which, incidentally, you still owe me.”

“I did stand a lunch, Crowley.”

“After I’d saved your neck from the Patriotic Shortener — and may I remind you that demons do not take payment in _g_ _âteaux de crêpes_. You _owe_ me, angel.”

Aziraphale sighed. “One way or another, that does seem to be the case. And assuming we manage to cobble together some plausible explanation for my employer, I can’t even offer you a share of the academic glory. Not that my own portion is likely to be impressive.”

“Academic glory? Pfft. Gabriel can have all that and welcome, provided he stays a long way from here.”

 _And from you,_ Crowley did not say — but the angel seemed to sense it, all the same.

“Oh, he won’t bother with me, or anything else in London, the very minute he’s got what he wants. And it _should_ be a simple task,” added Aziraphale, brightening up a little. “All we have to do is work out what it is you’re doing better to me with regard to Despond tasks, and fashion it into a nice case report, ready for signing.”

“ _A simple task_? Is that an attempt at wit? Besides which, I should point out to you that I really, truly, swear-to-Satan do not _know_ what I’m doing so brilliantly. I just do it.”

“The problem being, that you do it tolerably better than an angel of the Lord.”

Crowley leaned forward on his absurd throne, and steepled his fingers. “Aziraphale, I need numbers on this. Exactly how good is ‘tolerably better’?”

The angel swallowed nervously. “Well, according to Gabriel, I normally manage to lift humans out of Despond on perhaps two of the five occasions that I try it. But since the dawn of the Arrangement, I’ve been managing three out of five, and of late, it’s been ticking up in the direction of four. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that you’re at least fifty percent better at this particular Angelic Task than an official, Unfallen angel. I suppose it would be rude to offer my congratulations?”

“It would, so don’t.” The demon didn’t often look nonplussed, but he was managing it now. “Blessed hard work it’s been, at times.”

“And often thankless. Not that you’ve ever complained.” As soon as Aziraphale had said it, he realised how close he’d been getting to offering praise, and sure enough, Crowley was staring at him over the top of his spectacles, as newly-manifested claws sank into the upholstery of his gilded chair.

“A job’s a job, angel,” said the demon curtly, extracting his nails from ragged velvet, and getting to his feet. “And a more considerate angel would have brought something to drink. No matter. I keep a little something stashed under the display cases next to the library. You like the library, I remember. You can say hello to some old friends.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **An apology/note about Chapter 3's Reader Comments - which appear, ineffably, between those for C1 and C2 when the story is viewed as an Entire Work:**
> 
> TIL That if a struggling author creates a later chapter (3) before an earlier chapter (2) because they're v. v. organised, then re-sets the publication date to post the later chapter...later, _AO3 still remembers that the later-in-storyline chapter was created earlier_ , and inserts the comments as it sees fit. This is tremendous.
> 
> _And now, for some actual author's notes:_
> 
> _'Digiti Lingua'_ (the book Aziraphale first gave to Mr. Bamping to get Josiah literate) is a real book. Link [here](https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/library-rnid/2013/07/03/sign-alphabet-exhibition-digiti-lingua/).
> 
> TVGO Crowley doesn’t ever get a human cover story (I still hold to the theory that Crowley's been a lawyer at some stage, and when we first meet him in the book, he’s implied to be a stockbroker), but ‘dodgy antiquities impresario’ seems a fair pick for the late C18, and gives him a suitably spooky place to call home.
> 
> The description of Montagu House is cribbed from 'Origins of the British Museum' from 'Old and New London: Volume 4. (originally published by Cassell, Petter & Galpin, London, 1878)', viewable [here](https://www.british-history.ac.uk/old-new-london/vol4/pp490-519). It's wordy, but it has an engraving of the main hall with the giraffes, and of the gate-house.
> 
> Something like Aziraphale's personal ticket can be seen on this [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Museum#Indolence_and_energy_\(1778%E2%80%931800\)) wikipedia sub-entry for the early British Museum.


	4. A Man of Wealth and Taste

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He keeps Moët & Chandon, in a pretty cabinet. And now seems as good a time as any to drink the stuff.
> 
> _In which Crowley makes an admission, and Aziraphale is not a natural at spycraft...unless it involves dessert._

When Crowley had reconnoitered Montagu House fifty years ago, it had been abandoned for a generation, its once-famed fountains as murky as Satan’s bathtub. Roomy, centrally located, delapidated, and so loaded with debt that the Family Montagu would gladly be shot of the place, it was ideal for his schemes. He’d long sought such a spot, not on the orders of Hell, but on a mission of his own.

Aziraphale had been self-disciplined when, during the course of the Eighteenth Century, a succession of fires had ripped through whole troves of manuscripts that had made it through the strictures of the Reformation. His resolve had only faltered when it came to Sir Robert Cotton’s collection, and even then, his only miraculous saves from that conflagration had been the Lindisfarne Gospels (a Heaven-approved rescue), and the last known copy of ‘Beowulf’ on the face of the earth.

It was the Beowulf that had torn it. Full of godly sentiment, but also full of mayhem, mead, and monsters, it had fallen under Heaven’s definition of a frivolous work, and Aziraphale had received a rebuke from Above when they’d finally got round to auditing his miracle budget. Other irreplaceable manuscripts had been left to take their chances. There’d been significant losses, the angel had taken every one of them quietly but personally, and that was…unacceptable.

Without saying anything to Downstairs, Crowley had taken on The Preservation of Allegedly Frivolous Literature as a side project.

The trouble was that Hell had no consistent policy on books. But on the other hand, ever since their early win on God’s own turf, demons had a reputation to keep up in the Forbidden Knowledge department. And so the Serpent of Eden had fretted, fawned and flattered, written and reworded, excised all mention of his own name, and finally slid his plans through under the sponsorship of Mephistopheles, who’d got very lucky with Doctor Faustus in Crowley’s opinion, but remained Hell’s foremost authority on intellectual pride.

And Crowley had bloody well pulled it off. To be precise, Crowley _and_ Mephistopheles had pulled it off, since whatever else you might say about Mephisto, he was a genius at character work. He could be relied upon to impersonate a dusty academic or misanthropic priest — sowing rivalries, dropping gossip in learned ears, and being bitchy in Koine Greek. The fruit of these unholy labours had been the British Museum: patrolled by night-watchmen, and warded by a stealthy miracle or two, Montagu House was now a treasury of irreplaceable books under one fireproof roof. It also housed a collection of old pots, jewellery, and statues, a room of artifacts so racy that London’s antiquaries had coined the word ‘pornography’ to describe them, and a discreet demonic lair which, Crowley had boasted to Aziraphale, was his reason for going to such trouble in the first place.

It was a lie: the real point of it had been the Library. And if Aziraphale got embarrassed that so many Good Books had been saved by a foul fiend’s fancy for a fashionable flat, and added some fire-warding miracles of his own, then that was a bonus. Aziraphale hadn’t suspected a thing about Crowley’s true motives, of that the demon was certain. The angel had no notion that the main aim had been to stop him shedding feathers every time he heard of yet another manuscript blaze.

—⁂—

Crowley and Aziraphale climbed the grand staircase towards the Library (the Museum’s pair of night-watchmen were on duty, but on beats that would, miraculously, not cross theirs).

“I’ve heard rumours that this place is haunted,” whispered Aziraphale, as they passed under the stuffed giraffes, and into the Greek and Roman gallery. “Are you getting up to your old tricks?”

Crowley paused in front of a square wooden pillar, topped with glass case containing a two-faced pot. It was an Attic vase in the form of Centenary Janus: a bearded dotard facing left, and a boy’s hopeful profile facing right. Crowley snapped his fingers, and as Aziraphale watched, the vase rotated until the faces were pointing in opposite directions. It was just the sort of stunt to create enticing, ghostly rumours.

“A bit showy, that,” reproved the angel.

“No such thing as bad publicity.” The demon cracked a grin. “Every respectable museum should be haunted.”

“You can’t _haunt_ anywhere, Crowley. You’re not a ghost.”

“I can still command spirits, though — not to mention, the occasional bottle of wine.”

There was an additional click, and the front of the wooden pillar slid open. The space revealed seemed to go back a long way deeper than it should, and contained a wine-rack and sundry drinking paraphernalia. Crowley knelt in front of this hidey-hole, and ferreted around in it, making a series of clinking noises.

“Haven’t got these out in ages. Part of my private collection of antiquities. Make yourself useful, and hold them while I dig out the good stuff.”

And he passed Aziraphale a couple of Roman terracotta beakers, miraculously free of chips and scratches. Around the rim of each were impressed the words _AQVAM FORAS VINUM INTRO._ Aziraphale ran a fingertip over the letters, remembering.

“ ‘O _ut with the water, and in with the wine’;_ I seem to recall that motto. Just how long have _these_ been in your possession? Because they look awfully like they came from a little restaurant I knew in the reign of Claudius…

“The very same,” said the demon, and stood up holding a squat bottle, the cork of which was wrapped in a wire cage. “Finders keepers, as they used to say in Rome.”

“Petty theft!” tutted the angel. “Foul fiend, you disappoint me. I don’t doubt that you encourage the pilfering of souvenirs from fashionable establishments. I’m just surprised you found these worth your time.”

Restaurants had been two a bashed _denarius_ in the glory that was Rome, but they were for plebeians who couldn’t afford cooks — at least until the enterprising Petronius came up with the conceit that at _his_ establishment, one paid through the nose to eat exquisite food off rustic plates, and drink fine vintages, not from Murrine goblets, but from earthenware. The incongruity had delighted the Roman smart set.

“Angel. Everyone who was anyone nicked the cups from that place, and I’m flattered you thought I came up with it. Of course they weren’t worth anything, but having one on display proved you’d been there. Now _that_ was a place ahead of its time. Gluttony, vanity, theft, and pride: four sins for the price of a fish dinner.”

“Would it not be more convenient keep all this in your rooms?” asked Aziraphale. “You do live in the cellar.”

Crowley closed the door of his unorthodox bar, and Aziraphale detected the small _shift_ of a one-way infernal hex, ensuring that the secret space would not deign to manifest, even to its owner, until the sun had risen twice more.

“Artificial willpower,” explained his companion, with the admiration of a tutor. “Humans came up with it by themselves, the cunning buggers. Make it more work to give in to a temptation than to resist it, and you do the right deed — for the wrong reason. Hell can’t decide if they’re for it, or against it.”

“Hmmm. And why would _you_ be interested in self-denial?”

“That’s another thing I’ve learned from humans,” said Crowley, as they strolled on down the hall of Classical Antiquities. “Drinking alone is a fool’s game.”

A set of double doors swung open before them, letting them into the collection that, from Crowley’s point of view, was the _raison d’etre_ of the whole Museum: a king’s ransom in books, preserved to please a fusspot who took better care of old palimpsests than his own wings. The angel would never know the lengths to which Crowley had gone to ensure the last copy of Juliana of Norwich’s _Divine Love_ wasn’t torn up for bum-wipes in the 1530’s, balancing this sickeningly good deed by getting Machiavelli’s _The Prince_ into print.

The Library had tall windows that let in luxurious amounts of reading light in the daytime. At present, the rows of Morocco-leather spines were illuminated only by the evening sun, seeping in over the tops of internal window-shutters that were bolted for security after the visitors had left. Not that that the gloom mattered much to a demon, but angelic eyes were less used to darkness.

“ _Let there be light,”_ requested Aziraphale, and a luminescent sphere that hovered above his shoulder, like a housetrained glow-worm. He gave one of his anticipatory wiggles, inhaling the ambrosial scent of vellum, greeting the manuscripts like old friends. Crowley headed for the window-seat of a shuttered alcove, settled his shoulders against one wall of the niche, and put his feet up against the other.

For his many and variegated sins, the demon was mildly prone to intuiting the future, though never precisely enough to be useful (though he _had_ managed to snag a sketch of the Mona Lisa, in exchange for a tipsy, anachronous chat about helicopters). It was a trait that went with Hell’s territory, rather than Heaven’s. Heaven-sponsored prophets were big on stating the blindingly obvious, their most frequent advice being _pull your socks up_ (somehow, they managed this even before the invention of socks).

But genuine seers? Heaven wasn’t so keen on those. Aziraphale had started collecting prophetic works to check that no useful information about the future was leaking into the world of print…and had discovered, to his consternation, that some human divination techniques occasionally _worked_. And one of these methods was bibliomancy. It had been a fateful discovery, but his secret was safe with Crowley.

Aziraphale dreamily selected an ancient psaltery, pushing the books to the left and right of it a quarter-inch inwards, and pulling out the Chosen One with a pincer movement ( _Never drag out a book by top, Crowley! Think of its poor spine!_ ). The angel shut his eyes, opened the book at random, ran a finger down the page, then opened his eyes again. Bibliomancy was no doubt a superstitious habit, but Crowley was in no mood to tease Aziraphale about it. If God didn’t like Heaven’s best agent making clumsy attempts to find out what She wanted, She could stop being Ineffable for one single blessed moment, and tell him.

The angel’s personal reading-light brightened a little, and Crowley felt his own spirits brighten too. Perhaps Aziraphale _had_ found out something useful; he wouldn’t put it past the unusual bastard to have some innate, perspicacious knack.

“Well, what’d you get?” he drawled.

“A snippet from Psalm 119. _‘I am a stranger in this earth: hide not thy commandments from me.’_ ”

Crowley groaned. “The Nostradamus gambit bites us in the arse again! That ‘prophecy’ could just as well apply to _you_. Or to me. Or to anyone, mortal or immortal, in the history of this godforsaken planet, with the possible exception of Moses.”

“ _Godforsaken?”_ Aziraphale shut the psaltery with a snap. “Surely not even _you_ can think She would forsake Her own Creation?”

“Well, when was the last time a burning bush had a natter with anyone?”

Aziraphale performed one of his ‘some things are sent to try me’ sighs.

“Forgive me, my dear,” he murmured, and the demon nearly jumped out of his skin, until he realised the angel was talking to the book. Before replacing the psaltery, Aziraphale ran a hand over its covers in a way that did strange, awkward things to Crowley’s insides.

The demon found his own fingers had twisted the wire cage around the bottle of booze so hard that its wires had snapped.

“Drink!” he exclaimed decisively, and the bottle uncorked itself with a crack like a rifle shot. Aziraphale jumped a foot in the air, and his reading-light bobbed like a tiny, startled moon as the cork ricocheted around the library, coming to rest once more in Crowley’s palm.

“And what, in the name of all the saints, was _that!”_

“Champagne,” explained Crowley, who was already dispensing the bubbly with a practiced hand, and chilling it with a hasty miracle. “ _Le denier cri_ in fashionable swill. The vintners like to say it tastes of starlight.”

“I wonder who put such nonsense into their heads. And isn’t this stuff meant for celebrations?”

“And toasts. We shall toast the success of this unexpected project, getting Gabriel off your back, and never running into an Archangel again until the End of the blessed World.” He took his feet off the window-seat. “Here. Sit.”

Aziraphale perched on the opposite end of the alcove, and picked up his foaming beaker with care. “And what if we don’t succeed, and everything goes terribly, and we are called to account before out superiors, and everything about the Arrangement comes out, and — ”

“Then at least you’ll have tried champagne, angel. Cheers.”

—⁂—

It took half a bottle of fizz that Pierre Pérignon, that worthy Benedictine, would have been most annoyed to learn had fallen into the clutches of a demon, for Crowley to get the truth from Aziraphale. He kept his own departure from Aziraphale’s script in reserve, because when the angel found out what Crowley had actually done, he wasn’t going to be happy.

When admitting to a blunder, it’s best to soften up your target. Get them to admit to a blunder of their own, say that everyone makes mistakes, top up their glass, and radiate understanding. Only then, when they’ve taken you up on it all, should you hit them with the astounding cock-up you’ve committed yourself.

Such was Crowley’s routine, but when he was up against Aziraphale, the process took longer, because the stupid clever bastard was an expert at not-thinking about things. He’d spent four thousand, eight hundred years not-thinking about the moral arithmetic of the Flood, and a little over three hundred not-thinking that technically, the Spanish Inquisition had considered themselves on _his_ side. A small discrepancy involving Despond cases had been nothing to him.

The angel _had_ sensed that ‘his’ (collectively, his and Crowley’s) clear-up rate in Despond cases was much better than average. But he’d somehow also convinced himself that no-one was likely to notice; Heaven might send testy notes, but they rarely Commended him for anything. He’d sensed his numbers go up, and been reluctant to do anything to make them go down again for the most innocent of reasons: he loved good works so deeply that at some level, it didn’t matter to him who did them, or who got the credit for them. He was a _genuinely good person_ , and it boggled Crowley’s mind how he could also be an Angel of the Lord.

And stupidly clever as he was, Aziraphale didn’t have the sort of mind to notice that if a demon significantly improved a human's existence in three (occasionally, four) of Despond cases out of five, and this was averaged out over an angel’s base success rate of two out of five, then that was just about a fifty percent improvement, and liable to be noticed. Eventually. Even by those wankers Upstairs.

“Can’t say I’m pleased about this, but I don’t blame you either,” said Crowley, as he topped up their beakers. “Of course you want to do good, even by proxy. Probably some Divine reflex.”

“Very kind of you to say so,” said Aziraphale, from his side of the window-seat, then remembered who he was talking to. He braced himself for Crowley’s usual explosive reaction to such insults as ‘nice’ or ‘kind’, but it did not come.

“If anything, angel, maybe you should blame _me_. Free free. If I’m not being blamed for something, I get cramps. Honestly, I reckon all this is about half your fault, and half mine.”

“ _Honestly?”_ Aziraphale’s eyes narrowed.

Suddenly, he seemed a lot less contrite.

“Hmmm. You’re being a lot more reasonable about this than I thought you’d be. I even called you _kind_ , and you didn’t turn a hair.”

Blast, dammit, and bloody Hellfire, thought Crowley inwardly: he’d overdone the sweet reason, and now the angel had prematurely twigged that he was hiding something. For a being older than the solar system and wiser than a symposium of philosophers, Aziraphale was rubbish at low cunning — but lay the tolerance on too thick, and he’d catch on eventually.

“Let us go through the Despond primer that I prepared for you earlier,” said Aziraphale coolly. “It's best to be methodical about such things. It should be simple to see where it all went right.”

Oh, Hell’s Bells, here it came. Crowley took a fortifying swig of Dom Pérignon.

“I’ve long since committed Heaven’s approved methods to memory, and I know — though you try to hide it — that you have excellent powers of recall. So, _imprimis:_ you reassure the despairing that God will not lay upon any soul a greater burden than it can bear?”

Crowley made a vulgar gesture at the library ceiling. Granted, it was not the sky, but it was painted with clouds and bare-bottomed cherubs; it would do. The first time he’d given the finger to God, thousand of years ago, it had felt brave. _Go on, Your Omniscience, I know you’re watching, now where’s my lightning bolt?_ Now it was a reflex, but it still made Aziraphale wince.

“In the interests of the Arrangement, I’ll ignore that,” said the angel, sitting up very straight in his end of the window-seat. “Pray don’t do it again.”

“Then ssay less sssilly things, angel.”

“I’d say fewer silly things if we didn’t have to do this by process of elimination,” complained Aziraphale. “How can you _not know_ how you’re helping people? You’re the Serpent of Eden, for God’s — for goodness’ — for _something’s_ sake. Guile is your department, not mine.”

Crowley leaned forward, beaker in hand. “Angel, have you any idea _at all_ how temptation works? You come up with something, literally anything, throw it out there, and work with whatever sticks. And it’s the same with dragging people out of the blessed Slough of Despond; I just work with whatever sticks.”

“ _Whatever sticks?_ Look here, I gave you a comprehensive list of prompts, to be followed in numerical order.” The angel got a grip on himself. “Let us continue. _Secundus:_ You describe to the disconsolate the Ineffable rewards of Heaven?”

“You’ll have to remind me what those are. Look, how in Heaven’s name am _I,_ a literal demon, supposed to describe the Ineffable rewards of Heaven? How is anyone supposed to do it, for that matter? How do _you_ do it?”

“Well…I just say they’re much, much more wondrous than Earth. Ineffably superior.”

Crowley made a noise that was three-fifths of a chuckle. “Forgive me for saying so, but that doesn’t seem the strongest advertisement ever for being alive.”

“Life is a gift from God,” declaimed the angel, “and if any human thinks otherwise, then —”

“— then that's true Despair, and an unforgivable sin."

The angel bit his lip. "I was going to say, then we must be extra careful with them.”

“Were you indeed?” said Crowley quietly. The demon drained his beaker, and stared at the bookshelves across the room, as if they were of sudden and hypnotic interest to him. He’d taken off his glasses, and his eyes gleamed in the half-light like counterfeit guineas.

“ _Quartus_ — I mean _tertius_ — oh, this is hopeless. Have you even still _got_ the list?” Aziraphale’s tone grew more concerned than ever. “Crowley. You haven’t — _lost_ it, or anything?”

Crowley shrugged, and swung his golden stare back to the angel. “ ‘Course I haven’t lost it. I threw it away.”

“You. Threw. It. Away.” repeated the angel, on whom insight was belatedly dawning. “The list I worked on for months, to make sure nothing could go wrong?The list that covered every conceivable eventuality. The list that I had copied out by a scribe in Coventry, to make sure there was no trace of angelic power in it? You _threw it away,_ Crowley? Oh f..fiddlesticks!”

—⁂—

Angels do not swear. They definitely do not _curse_. Occasionally, they may resort to sarcasm.

Aziraphale was pacing up and down the library. The light he’d summoned earlier had assumed its proper form, and now nestled about the back of his head. Crowley wondered if he should tell the angel that his halo was showing, and decided against it. It wasn’t often that he got the chance to see it. Some angels had prissy halos like hovering coronets, some had platter-like contraptions that framed their heads in glory regardless of the viewing angle, but Aziraphale’s was almost an extension of his hair, modest in scope but with visible internal structure, like sunlight passing through clouds of incense. It stuck up at expressive angles, according to what the angel was thinking. It suited him.

“I still can’t blame you, Crowley,” said the halo’s owner, quivering with strained magnanimity. “After all, you didn’t blame me. And after all that, refusing constructive advice is a demon’s nature. I don’t know what I was thinking giving you a sensible list of how to approach Despond cases, and expecting you actually follow them. It would be unjust to blame you —”

Crowley held up a hand. “For Satan’s sake don’t panic. We’ll come up with something,” he continued, with more confidence than he felt. “There must _be_ reasons, we just don’t know ‘em yet. I mean, do you ever think about why you’re better at me at getting clergymen to give up all that self-denial for three square meals and someone to shag?”

Aziraphale halted his pacing.

“That is a _most_ indelicate way of putting it,” said the mortified angel. “Not everyone is suited to the life of an oblate, and I never, ever…wait, did you say that I was actually _better_ than you?”

“By around seventeen percent, and specifically at tempting people to abandon their austerities.”

The halo pulsed indignantly. This was better, thought Crowley. Annoyed Aziraphale was a vast improvement on Worried Aziraphale.

“Why didn’t you tell me before? It doesn’t even seem that much to boast about. I mean, it’s not nearly as imposing as your fifty percent —”

“Exactly. It’s the perfect number. Impressive, yet plausible. I put it down to your taste for creature comforts. Just enough to fly under the…under the…under whatever it is that stuff is going to fly under someday.”

Crowley groaned, got to his feet, and started pacing himself. He must be more stressed than he realised, because he was having (at all times to get one!) a mild premonition. Like all demonic premonitions, it was irrelevant to the problem at hand, and it hurt. The first one he’d ever got had been on the walls of Eden: the lead balloon that had clanged into his mind, long before humans had got around to using lead, or balloons, or metaphors, informing him that he’d stirred up more than just a _little_ trouble this time.

In contrast, his current premonition felt like having tomorrow’s trivia injected through your temples with a silver needle.

“Fly under what, Crowley?” Aziraphale snapped. When he got no reply, he looked at the demon more sympathetically.

“My dear fellow. Are you having one of your turns again? Could the answer be ‘Under the bridge’?”

“No.”

“Under..the hammer? The gun? The stars?”

“ _No._ Please sstop. I am begging you.”

“Under the weather!” said Aziraphale triumphantly.

“ _No!”_ Crowley began to bang his forehead gently against a bookcase. “Argh. Get out my head, uselesss thing! Avaunt! Aroint ye! Sssod off!”

He felt Aziraphale put a hand on his shoulder, and turn him around so they faced each other. The angel’s face radiated so much pure-hearted concern that Crowley recoiled from him instinctively, like a reptile from a brushfire. Aziraphale looked apologetic, and his judgemental halo sank discreetly back into his hair.

“It just looks…painful. I wish you’d let me dispel it for you, Crowley.”

The demon’s eyes glinted. “No. I don’t need your sympathy _._ Your lot probably invented the blessed things.”

“Let us both be rational,” said the angel tactfully, “and look upon this as an act of pure self-interest. You’re no good to me if you’re incapacitated. May I?”

Crowley grunted a reluctant assent, and felt a small Divine miracle flick across his brow, gone before he could process the fact that it pained him. The fractured half-vision of technology uselessly far in the future receded. Aziraphale shared out the rest of the champagne with scrupulous fairness, and handed him his own beaker.

“There we go,” he said. “I’m sure this stuff must have medicinal value. And I apologise for being such a crosspatch. It’s not easy to learn that one of the Fallen is better at pulling people out of the Slough of Despond than I am — even if the Fallen in question happens to be you, my dear fellow. And not to blow my own trumpet, but I’m not bad. What on Earth are you saying to those suffering souls?”

“I say as little as I can get away with,” muttered Crowley, “and that’s the truth.”

“But not, I suspect, the whole truth,” said Aziraphale. “You know, this would be a considerably simpler task if you weren’t obsessed with making everything look effortless. Some things are more important than one’s image.”

“Why would I lie to you now, about this? I’m just… _there_ , in general. A Presence. I don’t usually let them see me. All right, sometimes I do make conversation, but the humans do most of the talking. Sometimes they’re angry, sometimes they’re not. Sometimes they talk me ears off, sometimes they don’t say very much at all. And sometimes they’ll ask if I’m still there, and then I say ‘Yes’.”

“And that works, does it?”

“Sometimes,” countered the demon defensively. “And apparently, it works better than your Heaven-approved list.”

“We’re going to have do some more research on this. Not book research, though no doubt that will be necessary too. I’ll handle that side of things. What is needed is practical observations. Field trips. Actual, hands-on experience. _Science._ ”

Crowley had replaced his dark spectacles, and with them, his dry and guarded manner.

“Let’s make one thing clear: when I’m engaged on a case, I don’t exactly let the humans know what I am. Is your cunning plan that _you_ should come along with me on Despond excursions? ‘Cos that’s not going to work in a million years. I know that no-one wants sympathy from the devil, but I’m not so sure they want it from an angel, either. If you’re going to tag along radiating peace and goodwill and Heavenly condescension, it may, just possibly, cramp my style.”

“Then I will conceal my Presence, and the humans will never know I’m there. I don’t relish the prospect either, Crowley, but after all, these are technically _my_ Despond excursions. But I’ve always admire— well, you have a useful knack of rapidly coming to grips with testing situations. If you have any better ideas, by all means set them forth.”

“I’ll have to sleep on it,” said the demon shortly, as he gathered up the empty champagne bottle, and his treasured Roman beakers.

“I can’t have you coming to the bookshop at present — Gabriel might drop in without warning, and I can’t very well try keeping him out. As you said, I took something of risk coming here at an odd hour. I can’t drop by every time Heaven sets me a Task suitable for research purposes, and there’s a limit to how many notes I can leave with Mr. Bamping.”

“Then we’ll set up two other places where we can communicate,” said the demon, who had more experience with secret communications than the angel did. “Either by notes, or in person if necessary. No churches, but apart from that, I’m willing to go _anywhere,_ and you’re not, so you pick ‘em. Name the two busiest and most scandalous places you know.”

“Very well, then. Firstly, I propose Vauxhall Gardens, next to the marble statue of dear Handel — ”

“Not a bad choice. Always busy, and you could hide plenty of stuff up old George Frederick’s oboe.”

“ _Ahem._ Secondly, I believe Gunter's Tea Shop off Berkeley Square has quite the reputation. Carriages and sighing swains and lovelorn young ladies, as far as the eye can see.The young people leave each other notes, I believe, tucked into the railings behind it. And sonnets have been written to Mr. Gunter's bergamot sorbet.”

The demon’s eye-roll was almost audible.

“Aziraphale, I swear by Satan’s hairy nethers, that if we’re ever dragged off to answer for all this, you’ll still be clutching a fancy dessert. Fine. Gunter’s Tea Shop it is.”

—⁂—

Crowley led Aziraphale down the back stairs of the British Museum, where servants had scurried in its days as a grand residence, and out by what had been the coalman’s door. Outside, the twilight had slid into velvet gloaming, and beyond the Museum gates, in Great Russell Street, one of London’s posse of lamplighters was whistling as he finished up his beat.

Crowley gave an exclamation, and stooped to pick a long, pale object off the cobbles.

“Ha! And where did _this_ come from?” He brandished a white feather accusingly. “Must’ve been out here all afternoon, ever since you got here. Careless, very careless.”

“I’m not entirely sure that’s m — ” Aziraphale broke off, thanking divine providence that dismay made a reasonable stand-in for guilt.

“Look at the size of the blessed thing, angel, of course it’s one of yours. Are you _moulting_?”

Aziraphale hung his head. “Um. Well, I suppose I might be. The old pinions haven’t had much of an airing of late.”

“Oh, that’s rich, it really is. Bet you haven’t preened out your stragglers for months. What if it happens elsewhere, and a human notices? I thought you’d put yourself on a miracle budget.”

“My dear fellow, there are such things as birds.”

“But not many of them drop foot-long secondaries from under peoples’ jackets. You’d _have_ to burn a miracle or two for cover, and even then it’d be awkward. Oh, hello, I’m Mr. Fell, a perfectly normal human, and this is my pet albatross, Geoffrey. He’s very shy.”

“Crowley?”

The demon glared. “What?”

“Could I have my feather back, please?”

The demon handed the stray feather over with reluctance, and Aziraphale tucked it into an inner pocket, glad to get it into his own hands. When he looked up again, his Wily Adversary had vanished back into Montague House, with the same sort of disconcerting suddenness that he sometimes used when appearing behind one’s shoulder. The estimable Mr. Bamping, miraculously certain that he’d seen all the Museum’s visitors depart for the evening (even though one particular gentleman hadn’t gone past him), had locked up the gates and handed over the keys to the Museum’s night watch. But the gates themselves knew Aziraphale, and opened for him nonetheless, locking themselves again behind him.

The angel headed home, oblivious to being eyed-up by any number of footpads, cutpurses, and ladies of the night who all somehow came to the conclusion that they’d better leave this one alone. Crowley was right, the feather _was_ about the right size to be one of his own secondaries, and in all honesty, he kept his wings — immaculately white though they might be — about as carefully styled as his hair. He was probably fretting over nothing.

Once he was safely in his book-lined headquarters (angels did not have _lairs)_ and had it warded so hard against everything non-Aziraphale that even Gabriel would have to waste a second getting in, did he take the feather from his pocket, to get a better look at it.

It wasn’t his. His appearance as a human ran to ‘pompous civilian’, but there was no changing the martial nature of his wings: Aziraphale’s resembled those of a white hawk, built for rapid aerial skirmishes, and their feathers were broad and stiff. Neither was it one of Gabriel’s feathers, all elegant power, as befitted the swiftest angel in God’s firmament. This feather was fringed for silence, like the plumage of an owl.

Aziraphale tucked the feather into his pen-pot, where it would be hidden amongst his own, waiting to be fashioned into pens (not an _affectation_ , he always told himself, merely an economy). Then he readied himself for a night of reading. But before he did so, he took (not without trepidation) his miraculously-duplicated copy of Emmanuel Swedenborg’s _De Caelo et de Inferno_ from the shelf, to see if Gabriel was already nagging him to come up with the goods. To his relief, there was no sternly-worded note tucked between the pages, but nevertheless, the book fell open to a certain page without prompting, and nagged him all on its own —

“… _ **The Celestial Angels immeasurably surpass in wisdom the lower, Spiritual Angels. The Celestial Angels do not reason about Truths of Faith, because They perceive them in Themselves, but the Spiritual Angels reason about Them, whether They are true or not…therefore, the Lord always provides Intermediate Angels, through whom there is Communication and Conjunction…”**_

_We lowlier angels **do** reason,_ thought Aziraphale. _I am a mere Principality — not lofty enough to have Gabriel’s presence, nor Sandalphon’s loyalty, nor Michael’s surety of purpose, and so, Heaven help me, I am inclined to think about things. Invoking the Ineffable can only get an angel so far._

He replaced his version of _De Caelo et de Inferno_ on its shelf, and instead selected Maimonides’ invaluable _Regimen of Health:_ a Medieval text, written by a Jewish medic, in Arabic, for the benefit of Saladin’s depressed son. The burden of the good doctor’s recommendations (with Aziraphale’s marginal notes on their potential) ran as follows:

_* Engage in regular gymnastics (✗)_

_* Remember to eat supper. (✓✓)_

_* Choose fruit for dessert. (✗…✓…?)_

_* Drink sweet beverages (✓)_

_* Ride frequently on horseback (✗✗✗)_

_* On awakening (✗✗), read an improving book. (✓✓✓)_

Aziraphale blotted his notes with sawdust, and sighed. Unless he’d underestimated Crowley’s appetite for gymnastics and, shudderingly, equestrianism (he’d have to ask him about fruit for dessert), it seemed unlikely that the demon’s secret was along these lines. Nevertheless, Aziraphale laboured in the back of his bookshop until sparrows began chirping in the little courtyard outside, going to and fro from his shelves to his desk and notebooks like a questing truffle-hound, his hair sticking out at increasingly odd angles, and the dreaded copy of _De Caelo_ temporarily forgotten.

Which was a pity. Whilst old Swedenborg had been madder than a box of frogs and wrong ninety-nine times out of a hunded, he’d also been bang to rights about the Angels of Communication and Conjunction.

* * *

**In the Firmament of Records**

_> Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness!<_

Vereviel’s wings beat steadily, and her deep-violet robes rippled behind her, serene as if painted by Fra Angelico himself.

Nothing about the austere countenance of the Principality of Vows indicated panic. Had she deigned to sit upon a monument, she could have modelled for a statue of Patience. She still made her way through the Firmament of Records with no more commotion than a floating hyphen, but her mind was full of dashes and exclamation marks, cacophonies of colour and jagged splashes of sound. Vereviel liked predictability and promises, but now, whilst following orders from her Recording Angel — to dust an anonymous blessing on anyone seeking the nature of the mysterious Anomaly — she had introduced a tiny discrepancy of her own.

She’d been ever so careful. She hadn’t gone anything like close enough to the ground to perceive individual activity, and not until she was ascending to Heaven again had she looked downwards, and seen a single feather spiralling inexorably towards the crooked chimneys and tucked-away courtyards of London.

Now she hovered before her great and considerate Friend, her whole-body halo splintering with distress.

_> Oh, my goodness! Oh my dear, forgive me! I may have made an_ actual mistake!<

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RE: Updating on Mondays. This appears to have been an outright lie by my past self, for whom I apologise.
> 
>  *** Saying 'Finders Keepers, Losers Weepers' in Rome:**  
>  The Romans probably said “Uti possidetis, ita possideatis”, but that’s a bit of a conversation-stopper, even for celestial beings.
> 
>  **** Crowley getting occasional, baffling glimpses of future technology:**  
>  There’s absolutely nothing to suggest this in the TV show — but in the book, Crowley did buy his Mona Lisa cartoon straight from Da Vinci, who sold it to him over a bottle of wine and a chat about helicopters. How did Renaissance Crowley know about helicopters? It is a mystery, but there are a few other hints that although Agnes Nutter was the only person to know the future clearly, others have been capable of getting a garbled crossed line. Crowley suspects that GK Chesterton may have had a mild intuitive gift because of [this poem](http://www.gkc.org.uk/gkc/books/oldsong.html), and St. John of Patmos got one thing right in Revelation: the Number of the Beast _was_ 666.
> 
>  ***** The Medieval polymath Maimonides and his oddly modern tips for mental wellbeing:**  
>  Rabbi Ben Maimon was born in Cordoba in 1135. I’m fairly certain the Regimen of Health, like most of his medical and scientific works, was written in Judeo-Arabic (Arabic written with the Hebrew script), but I’m sure Aziraphale wouldn’t have too much trouble with this. There’s no free, full English translation of Maimonides’ medical texts AFAIK, so his handy hints come from the [Handbook to Life in the Medieval World](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=-Jf5t1vFw1QC&pg=PA516&lpg=PA516&dq=Medieval+World,+Cosman,+Jones+maimonides+medical+books&source=bl&ots=tjkV5mZzLa&sig=ACfU3U2wnSd-70VweViz8pQ1lioTaTUiSw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjqvajywPXpAhUVuHEKHTV2AyIQ6AEwAHoECAwQAQ#v=onepage&q=Medieval%20World%2C%20Cosman%2C%20Jones%20maimonides%20medical%20books&f=false), by Madeleine Pelner Cosman and Linda Gale Jones.
> 
> ****** Champagne!:**
> 
> At this period, Moët & Chandon is currently called Moët et Cie, but the name of Dom Pérignon (still their prestige cuvée) is already renowned. C18 Champagne would be terribly sweet to modern tastes.


	5. Accident and/or Sagacity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little background on the angel Vereviel - and a whole lot more Despond-wrangling from our favourite angel and demon.

_A Second Glimpse into the Firmament of Records_

It is natural to wonder how, amongst all the millions of angels at Gabriel’s command, Vereviel happened to be personally (albeit distantly) acquainted with the Emanation of Yesod, Third among the Seven Mysteries, and the Treasurer of the Vault of Souls. But although Gabriel had always been better at inspiring awe than love, he had a leader’s knack of never forgetting anyone’s talents, and just as BC was about to turn into AD, he’d summoned earnest, diligent Vereviel to his presence, and asked her if she could help an Archangel out.

The reason was the Annunciation of the Birth of John the Baptist. Unlike the Annunciation of the Birth of Christ, it had not gone smoothly, because the news was not delivered to the mild-mannered wife of a carpenter, but to a rabbi, and no rabbi likes being told what to do.

Not even by an Archangel.

And so it came to pass that Gabriel struck the Rabbi Zechariah mute for doubting that he and his wife Elizabeth, neither of them spring chickens, were destined for parenthood. Zechariah had been of a sceptical turn of mind, and after Gabriel materialised in a cloud of incense and glad tidings, the old priest had questions for him:

_Then Zechariah asked the angel, “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.”_

_And the angel said unto him, “Let me break this down for you: how many people do you know with a twenty-foot wingspan? I am the Archangel Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, I have been sent to tell you this exceedingly good news, and you have the chutzpah to doubt me?_ Me! _If I say Liz is expecting, you go out and buy a crib. And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day it happens, if for no other reason than to spare you from answering awkward questions about your sex life. It’s going to be a boy, by the way, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll call him John._ Mazel tov. _”_

(Luke 1:18-20 had subsequently undergone a number of revisions from Heaven’s editorial department.)

Gabriel had regretted striking Zechariah mute, but an Archangel can’t very well go back and say ‘In hindsight, that was hasty’. And so it also came to pass that Vereviel had helped the panicking rabbi through nine awkward months until his son was born. Even before she signed up for work in the Firmament of Records, Vereviel had never been taken with the clumsy business of talking. She far preferred symbolism, and after nine months, Zechariah could make his opinions known by gestures and expressions, faster than he could write them down.

Gabriel, however intimidating he might be, was diligent in his duties, and he appreciated diligence in others. The Zechariah business had earned Vereviel a Commendation, for what had been only her fifth Earthly mission.

But at present, as she hovered before her Recording Angel, Vereviel believed her flawless record was all for naught. Her wings trembled, and her thoughts were sharp and bright and panicky, tumbling like shards of glass.

She sensed her huge Friend reach into her mind, and unroll a tiny part of its beautiful name, in order to calm her. Only when she had focused upon that did it communicate.

**> You have made an _actual mistake,_ Vereviel? How large a mistake? _<_**

_> Enormous! The size of a whole feather! When I came back to Heaven, I found one of mine was missing. It must have dropped somewhere over London, and I cannot go back to search. I should have checked my wings before setting out and oh, I should not have gone...<_

**> If I recall, it was I who instructed you to go. Are you questioning my judgment? _<_**

_> Never! <_

Vereviel’s halo glowed with indignant trust; the judgment of a Recording Angel was impeccable, by definition. Which was a very good thing, because she had, at her Friend’s suggestion, hovered just close enough to London for just long enough to observe Aziraphale carrying out another of his Good Deeds — the presentation of an improving book to a needy family — and then immediately returned to Heaven, his excursion accounted for in the Firmament of Records.

Vereviel’s vast, observant Friend radiated an aura that the Principality, had she been accustomed to a human sensorium, might have called rueful.

**> You do realise that every day that passes, I record millions of occurrences that do not go the way I was anticipating? _ <_**

_> But I have…I have interfered! Even if I did not intend to. Without Higher Clearance, interfering is an error. God might notice! <_

**> There is a human dictum that not a sparrow falls without the Almighty noticing the fact. Humans have such notions framed, and hung on their walls. Sometimes even a depiction of Her eye, watching. One wonders how they bear it. <**

_> I have no idea. I have never made a mistake before and now I possibly may have done, and if I have then the humans are right, She must have seen it, and — <_

**> And yet one thing is certain: everyone on Earth continues to go about their business. If mortals can bear this feeling, we may suppose angels can. <**

_> What do you do, when you feel it? <_

**> I use an old human remedy, Vereviel: I try not to dwell on the subject. But now that this has happened, I have a feeling that other things may not go entirely as expected. You should prepare yourself. <**

_> Alas! For the worst? <_

**> My dear, I know you will do that without my instruction — though sometimes, I wonder how much more angels might achieve if we also prepared for the best _._ But what I was going to suggest was that next time you visit London, you have a good preen first. <**

* * *

_Back down to Earth  
_

In the dear, damned, distracting town of London, honest folk had been about their business for several hours, and dishonest ones for about an hour before that. All except one. Half of Crowley’s mercurial soul lived for interesting times, but the other half craved an easy existence, and the easiest existence of all was one spent defiantly asleep.

Crowley’s human bed had drapes of Utrecht velvet, immaculate sheets, and a sable counterpane. All that was missing from it on this particular morning was its owner. When a snake is startled, its response is to squeeze itself into a dark, comforting space where it can press its coils against all the sides at once. Naturally, Crowley had a contingency plan for such moments — and the fact that he sometimes passed a night or several in a padded crate labelled ‘Han Dynasty Bronzes’ was nobody’s business but his own.

The Serpent of Eden nudged the crate open with his snout, and yawned as only snakes can, tongue a-flicker. The morning tasted of mischief. London mornings _always_ tasted of mischief, an invigorating flavour, and ten minutes later, dapper Mr. Crowley was strolling towards the gatehouse of the British Museum. He greeted the doorman with a nod.

“Mr. Bamping.”

The doorman gave Crowley a bow in return, somewhat more formal than the one he was accustomed to give Mr. Fell.

“Out early today, Mr. Crowley. Sir. It’s barely ten o’clock.”

Now _that,_ thought the demon with approval, was bloody cheek. But he still wasn’t going to take backchat from a mortal.

“Beauty sleep works for some of us. Any letters left for me?” Experience had taught Crowley that even after schooling in the use of messaging-posts like Gunter’s Tea Shop or Vauxhall Gardens, Aziraphale was prone to just drop off notes with humans he trusted.

“You have that knack of knowing, Sir. A boy delivered this a couple of hours ago.”

Crowley unfolded the note, and read a rambling, anonymous threat about how Divine Providence would one day catch up with his own nefarious deeds (it already had). Aziraphale’s spycraft was sketchy, but penmanship was his strength — this scrawl was nothing like his usual angelic hand. The demon read the missive again using miraculous sight, and picked out the letters of Aziraphale’s real message: _Arundel Steps. Three O’Clock. Sea-Captain. Arrive sober._

The problem with people like Francis Bamping, reflected the Serpent of Eden, was that they were too perceptive. If this man considered him to be a Bad Influence, a Rum Cove, and a Proper Caution to boot, he wouldn’t be barking up the wrong apple tree. Putting such folk into trances in case felt unsporting, but needs must. Crowley snapped his fingers, and immediately had Bamping’s placid but undivided attention.

“When Mr. Fell last visited the Museum, I believe he gave you a gift," said Crowley. "What was it?"

“A book for my son. He told me it was too damaged to sell.”

“Ha. Do you believe that?”

“Not I,” said the doorman. “Mister Fell's got a good heart, but he don’t know the meaning of subtlety. He roughs up the covers himself, for those of us as won’t take charity.”

Crowley nodded sadly. Technically, Aziraphale did know the meaning of ‘subtlety’: it was one of those big marzipan centrepieces you got at Medieval banquets.

“What was the book called, Francis?”

“The Elevating History of Little Goody Two-Shoes, describing the Means by which she acquired all her Learning and Wisdom.”

“And does Josie — does your son actually like it?” Even for Aziraphale, that title seemed a bit much.

“He’s only nine, so forgive him, but I believe he considers it _worthy.”_

It was a pity that Francis Bamping would remember none of this conversation, because not many humans got to see Crowley’s true smile.

“Francis, in ten seconds you’ll wake up, and we will have had an exchange of wits, during which you got the better of me.”

 _Snap!_ went his fingers, and it was so.

Crowley sauntered off down Great Russell Street, clad in an aura of functional invisibility (not literal invisibility — that took more effort, and after a while, people tended to bump into you) to ensure that no-one would either collide with him, or properly notice him, while he had a long think. It was a sardonic motto in Hell that no good deed goes unpunished, and the demon was beginning to believe it.

Problem the First: He, Crowley, a literal fiend, was apparently a better choice for pulling humans out of Despond than an honest-to-God member of the Heavenly Host. Problem the Second: said member of the Heavenly Host needed an explanation for this _presto pronto_ — and there was a Morton’s fork, thought Crowley, if ever he’d been jabbed in the arse by one. If he came up with the answer, he’d be assisting Upstairs in the Salvation of Souls. If he didn’t, Aziraphale would be in trouble and in the worst possible case, the Arrangement might be uncovered.

That didn’t bear thinking about.

Crowley locked the horrid possibility in a mental oubliette so he could immerse himself in his side project: thwarting Aziraphale at whatever do-gooding he’d cooked up to assist the Bamping family this time. If the angel had his way, Francis and Eleonora and their offspring would have long since turned into a saccharine homily, complete with deaf, bravely-struggling Josie and two devoted sisters who’d end up resenting him for the rest of their lives. Aziraphale tended to forget the sisters’ names, but Crowley didn’t: they were called Tetty and Kitty (all right, technically they were Elizabeth and Catherine, but mortals who tweaked their names to their liking were mortals after the demon’s heart).

He got so preoccupied by scheming that he forgot that he’d miracled himself functionally invisible, until the awkward moment when he was standing in a bookshop on Finsbury Square, a research copy of _Little Goody Two-Shoes_ in his hand, facing a bookseller who was having a mental meltdown because he was selling a book to a person who wasn’t actually _there_. Once he’d wiped the man’s memory of the most traumatic three minutes of his life, Crowley asked if could recommend anything Gothic that young ladies might favour, and added the blood-curdling _Horrid Mysteries_ to his order by way of compensation.

Crowley arranged for _Little Goody Two-Shoes_ to await him at Montague House, and _Horrid Mysteries_ to be delivered to the Bamping sisters in Cheapside — but first, he smiled inscrutably, fished in his pocket for a book of tickets to Vauxhall Gardens, and slipped two in at the start of Chapter One, along with a couple of dabs of devilish luck. Hell forbid that the Bamping girls should run into more than just the right amount of trouble.

Then he made for Arundel Stairs in weaving strides, snapping his fingers each time he turned a corner. A saturnine gentleman in a black coat and striped grey stockings began the journey, but it was finished by his nautical twin who wore his long hair in a plait, and whose lean arms, bare to the elbows, were tattooed with sea-serpents. A final snap, and Captain Crowley’s incongruous glasses replaced themselves with an eyepatch. He sincerely doubted that his other eye would be the strangest thing his nautical client had seen.

Mr. A. Z. Fell, his usual picture of dated elegance, was waiting for him in a passenger wherry moored at the bottom of Arundel Stairs.

“Not that I don’t appreciate your attention to detail,” whispered the angel, as a red-headed gentleman of piratical aspect seated himself beside him, “but was the costume necessary? This is scheduled as an Invisible Presence job.”

“Not any more, it’s not,” replied Crowley. “And sometimes an outfit gets me into the right frame of mind.”

“Where to, Sir?” said the waterman to Aziraphale, who was known among those who both powered and piloted London’s surviving wherries to be a generous passenger, even if he requested journeys at all hours of the day and night and sometimes kept odd company.

“Wapping, if you please. Drop us off at The Prospect of Whitby.”

The waterman made a face. “Roughest pub in the district — and they don’t hold many tea-parties in Wapping. The locals call it the Devil’s Tavern.”

The red-head turned to his companion, and grinned. “Well, if that’s not an omen, I don’t know what is.”

—⁂—

_Case I: The Devil’s Tavern_

In theory, the Despond job in Wapping went off without a hitch.

Crowley had spent hours in discussion with the sort of sea-captain who’d been a cabin-boy at the age of eleven, and was now tougher than jute caulking and married to a lady of matching temperament. The only thing that could bring the pair of them down was the fact that they’d never been able to have a child. When troubled by this, the captain could drink like a fish and curse like the devil (though not so impressively as his wife, a native of Billingsgate). But when he was in the company of children, Heaven’s briefing had informed Aziraphale, he had a protective but warm-hearted manner that had flagged the couple as ideal candidates to start a Home for Waifs and Foundlings.

Unsurprisingly, this gentleman and Crowley had got on like a shipyard on fire. The only problem, Aziraphale reflected, was how few of Crowley’s less-than-orthodox techniques would be palatable to the Archangel Gabriel.

“You know, there’s a human proverb about having one’s cake, and eating it,” he said to Crowley, as they left The Prospect of Whitby on foot.

The reproof felt ungenerous, since Crowley had carried out the mission to the letter. After complimenting the red-haired stranger on both his ability to hold his liquor, and the breadth of his vocabulary, the captain had rolled out of The Prospect of Whitby filled with several pints of stingo, plus a fiery determination to help London’s waifs and strays. Anyone who got between that man and his future Foundling Home was going to regret it.

“You’d know more about that than me,” replied the demon, who was still dressed for a job interview with Edward Teach.

“Very droll. What I _meant_ was, you’re clearly offsetting the negation of Despond with the cultivation of Wrath and Bad Language. You’re flirting with actual Blasphemy, Crowley. Is this your standard practice?”

“I thought waxing Wrath was the done thing Upstairs — ”

“Only with proper clearance,” said Aziraphale. “And goodness, that fellow could swear!”

“The man’s a sailor. Besides, he was swearing at a demon. If anything, that’s extra points for your side.”

“Don’t try your sophistries on _me,_ serpent.”

“Besides, I gave as good as I got.”

“The problem being that the person doing it was supposed to be me!”

“Didn’t it work? He was so surprised to hear me talk of Divine Plans _and_ swear a blue streak, he stopped despairing for a second, and _believed_. He believed that just sometimes, God’s agents do walk the Earth, and that not all of you are too snooty to consider the likes of him, and perhaps he’ll believe it for long enough to make a difference. No-one heard us but you, and maybe God if She’s got nothing better to do. I like rudery, your boss is immune to insults, and you love forgiving people. Unless swearwords give you indigestion, I don’t see there’s a problem.”

Aziraphale bridled. “Crowley, I’ve heard those words many times.”

“That’s where I’ve got an advantage — because unlike humans, or us Fallen for that matter, you can’t or won’t use them.”

The angel stopped in his tracks, and Crowley could see, with pride and dismay, that Aziraphale was tempted. The angel was honest-to-Satan tempted, just slightly, to make an impolite reply. Then he squared his shoulders, his eyes shone, and his curls gleamed as if he’d given them a polish. It made him look formidable, and that was a problem for Crowley in ways he wasn’t yet ready to think about. Then the angel looked rueful, and that was even worse.

“I thought we had a gentleman’s agreement that you wouldn’t try tempting _me,_ foul fiend.”

“ ’pologies,” muttered Crowley, as the pair of them walked on. “Force of habit.”

“Then pray overcome habit, and the name of the Arrangement, find some way of presenting your discoveries to the Archangel Gabriel. I can’t tell him that I might, even with the best intentions, encourage humans to _curse._ He’ll never believe me. It’s out of character. It’s — it’s shameful.”

“Then act as if it’s shameful, and if your Archtosspot doesn’t like it, all the better. I know his type. If something’s discreditable to you, he’s more likely to believe it. Don’t say you _encourage_ sailors to swear like sailors; hint that you don’t reprimand them. Then let him write his stern note about how your discoveries aren’t fit to wipe his boots on, and demand you come up with something else. It’ll buy us time.”

Aziraphale never forgot that Crowley was Fallen _—_ but every so often, the disparity between the demon’s thinking and his own was startling. Sometimes the angel wondered if the symbolism of hellfire was misinformation, because the Crowley he knew best was more akin to water. He noticed the smallest opportunities, he _never_ stopped trying, and when he wanted to be, he was indeed more subtle than any creature alive.

And he was incurably vain. But because he was Fallen, and therefore accursed, he was a vain being who was allergic to normal flattery.

“My goodness,” said Aziraphale in shocked tones, “that’s _devious_. And _cynical_. Without sufficient Thwarting, you might corrupt a saint. Or even me!”

“One does one’s worst.” Satisfaction rolled off Crowley like fumes off hot rum. Then he looked troubled. “Aziraphale. I know you have your angelic mores, and — well, I may tempt a bit, but proper corruption’s not my style — and even if it was, it’s not in my interests to try any of that stuff on you. Heaven only knows what your replacement would be like.”

“Pshaw. Foul fiend, you’ve had eight hundred years to corrupt me, and it hasn’t happened yet.”

—⁂—

_Foul fiend, you’ve had eight hundred years to corrupt me._

_Longer, in fact,_ thought Aziraphale moodily, when he was back in his bookshop under the sign of the Globe, trying to rehash the demon’s discoveries to suit Gabriel’s tastes.

He’d probably been at risk as far back as Rome, when in search of a conversational opener, he’d asked an eternally damned being if he was still eternally damned. Crowley’s riposte had had a spark in it, and before long, Aziraphale was describing the delights of seafood, and whether one should add to one’s oyster a squeeze of lemon, a drop of _garum,_ or remain a strict purist. When he got to the ‘strict purist’ bit Crowley had laughed uproariously, like someone who hadn’t had much to laugh about in years.

There had been so little that was corrupt about the demon, both then and now. His worst deed, at that first dinner, had been to make sure a certain seafood-loving senator would never again squeeze a slice of lemon without hitting himself in the eye. If Crowley was engineering Aziraphale’s fall, he had patience. But it was possible, perhaps. Heaven regularly sent out circulars about the depraved cunning of all demonkind.

Well, God’s forces could be cunning too. As wise as serpents, the Bible said. Aziraphale was pretty sure that Thomas Aquinas had an argument that even deliberate blasphemy is only venial sin, since a heartfelt blasphemer (as opposed to a casual swearer) must by definition believe, impolitely, in the dignity of God. Perhaps he could rehash that argument to for Gabriel’s moral palate.

Once he’d dug out his (autographed) copy of Aquinas’ _Summa Theologica_ and turned to the topic of righteous indignation, the angel found his writing rhythm. He wasn’t too bad at the old righteous indignation himself. Not to mention plagiarism, it seemed.

He blotted and folded his work, tucked it between the pages of _De Caelo et de Inferno_ , then offered an apologetic prayer directly to God, to the effect that as far as he knew, he _meant_ well, but he was perpetually discovering that unlike the wings of angels and demons, the human world was not black and white.

When Aziraphale checked _de Caelo_ the next morning — had he nodded off in his chair? He _never_ slept — his report to Gabriel had vanished, to be replaced by a little note-card headed DEO.SOLI.GLORIA. It read, in its entirety: _Your invaluable advice on human diet and exercise is noted. Ever tried practicing what you preach?_

* * *

_Case II: Write your injuries in dust_

Over the next week or so, Aziraphale heard other humans swear at Crowley in his guise as a consoling spirit — once while he was in his corporation, but mostly as a Presence. And Crowley didn’t magnanimously forgive them, as Aziraphale’s _Hints Against Despond_ would have instructed him to. He just… _absorbed_ such outbursts, acknowledging, without saying so, that they had weight.

On occasions when someone intuited (just as the the sea-captain had) that Crowley really _was_ an arcane entity trying to help them, they sometimes cursed him too. If the demon thought it would get a laugh, he’d comment dryly that he’d heard better.

But a few people cursed God in a different way - intending not to insult the Almighty, but to damage themselves. At those times, Crowley expertly re-aligned their anger so the focus was on him: the curses diverted themselves from God, and descended on the demon like iron dust to a magnet. When Aziraphale closed his bodily eyes, and looked instead with the eyes of his spirit, he could see Crowley’s true form absorbing each despairing words into its coils.

 _Damn You, God,_ _for saying you care, but never helping. Liar. Coward. Hypocrite. I hate You. I hate You. I reject any comfort You offer. You will not succeed. Damn You for creating the Universe. Damn You for creating mankind. Damn You for creating anything. Hate, Hate, Hate, and throw away the Key.  
_

Crowley accepted every word. Then the human would ask Crowley if he was still there, and he would let them know that he was.

They were often surprised at that, but not as surprised as Aziraphale. If this was one of the least problematic of the demon’s techniques (after letting everyone swear like sailors) he dreaded to think how things might end up. The dusting of despairing words had actually _become part_ of Crowley, he was sure of it.

“What’re you thinking about?” asked the demon off-handedly, as they made their way back from a job in Orpington.

“Oh nothing, nothing,” said Aziraphale hastily. “Just woolgathering, you know. It’s just been a long day.”

A gleam escaped from behind Crowley’s lenses.

“Bollocks,” he said. “You’re _never_ thinking about nothing. Incapable of woolgathering. And when you go home, angel, you’ll carry on thinking about whatever it is you’re thinking about, all the blessed night, and knowing that that will ruin my beauty sleep. So, out with it.”

“Very well — what _was_ that substance? What was it that you were —”

“Not to brag, angel, but I had quite the scene in the Book of Genesis. Chapter three, verse fourteen.”

Aziraphale blinked. Twice. “ _And dust shalt thou eat, all the days of thy life._ I never supposed that could be a metaphysical truth. Silly of me.”

Crowley made no answer, but proceeded with lengthened strides, so the angel had to almost jog-trot to keep up with him.

“Is that what it is? Tangible despair?” Aziraphale had read a lot of metaphysics in his time. “Darkness visible,” he added, and shivered.

“You’re the bloody theologian. You tell me.”

“If you insist. I think that when human hope turns to despondency, even to despair, then demons can, perhaps, use it.” Aziraphale felt a repugnance to the idea, beyond his power to quell. “They can consume it. It serves you as a form of — well, not to put too fine a point on it, Crowley, but you don’t have much appetite for actual _food.”_

“Angel, _neither_ of us need food.”

“I concede that. But does human despair serve a similar function for you, on occasion?”

“As you’re fond of pointing out, I _am_ a demon, and just occasionally, I may do demon things.” Crowley made a face. “I don’t recommend the flavour.”

“And do you _cultivate_ such feelings in humans?” Aziraphale could think of no more delicate way of putting it. “For the purposes of…consumption?”

At that, Crowley got properly angry.

“What d’you think I am, a professional misery farmer? The stuff’s all around us, drifting in the bloody aether. Some days, it’s like wading through soup. Misery soup, with Croutons of Despond.” A forked tongue flicked out, before Crowley could control it. “Maybe you can’t taste it, but believe me, there’s no shortage.”

Then Crowley turned his back and began walking off, and suddenly, Aziraphale felt terrible for him. All sorts of apologies rose to his lips, but what came out, with all the _bonhomie_ at his disposal, was — “Oh, bother! But will you at least check George Frederick’s oboe on Saturday?”

The demon stopped as if shot in the back, then bent double. Aziraphale feared he’d said the wrong thing, but when Crowley stood up again, he gave him acknowledging wave. The angel watched his Adversary’s spare, retreating outline with thoughtful eyes, then returned for yet another night alone is his bookshop, burning the midnight oil.

Because no angel except a Fallen one could say: your bitter feelings are a banquet to me. Have no fear that I will forgive them, or forget them, or condemn them; I will devour them. Aziraphale knew that Thomas Aquinas could not help him here. He wrote and re-wrote several elegant paragraphs, then struck them out in favour of seven words.

~~… _When attempting to counter Despond, it is vital that the intervening angel rejects nothing that is revealed to them. Not infrequently, the mortal soul will never have uttered such thoughts to anyone; we are their last best hope. Therefore…_~~

_For God’s sake, just let them talk._

* * *

_A Diverting Interlude in Vauxhall Gardens_

Vauxhall Gardens on a Saturday afternoon in late Spring was awash with manic _joie de vivre_. Crowley had come to pay his respects to the life-sized bronze of Handel, and to check that worthy composer’s oboe for messages from his Adversary, when he heard a high-pitched “Pssst!” — and then, when like a well-trained agent, he sauntered on and leaned against a pillar to spy out a place to talk, an even more frantic “Pssst! It’s _me!”_

Fieldcraft had never been his angel’s strong point. Behind smoked lenses, the demon rolled his eyes. “Do I know you, Sir?”

Crowley turned, formal as you please, ready to cut Aziraphale with an eyebrow-raise that would socially incapacitate a mortal for weeks. He was greeted by a string of paper lanterns _a la Chinoise_ , under which a lady in fawn-coloured satin was glaring at him. A stack of pale curls teetered on her head, and her bearing was midway between knight-errant and dowager aunt.

“Of course you do, you nitwit!”, exclaimed the woman.

Crowley snapped his fingers, cloaking the pair of them in true, merciful invisibility. He couldn't keep that up forever, but needs must.

“Aziraphale, it’s a less-than-fantastic disguise if you look like your own sister. And your hair’s twenty years out of date.”

“It’s your fault I had to miracle myself into this get-up in the first place!”

“Angel, why are you here? Is the Archtosspot on to us?”

“No, thank goodness! And I wish you wouldn’t call him that,” she protested — feminine, but still all Aziraphale. “I have been sent another Despond Task — a big one — but there’s an additional matter that we _must_ discuss!”

“Couldn’t you have left a message with Bamping?”

“That’s _precisely_ what I wanted to talk to you about! I assume _you_ are responsible for current developments in the Bamping household?”

The demon could not suppress a grin. “Developments?”

“I’ve just spent an afternoon as a guardian angel, because — oh, silly me, of course you know _why_. Because I’m not sure who else would have sent the Bamping sisters a Gothic novel, containing two tickets for this very place! I’ve been chaperoning those girls for hours,” Aziraphale extracted a handkerchief from her sleeve, and dabbed her brow. “I had to use a miracle to get them off my hands. They’ve only just gone, and Heaven knows how they’ll explain the thing to their parents. It’s not enough that your Arrangement has got us into hot water, you had to actively start Thwarting me! You — you _fiend!”_

“Angel, have you never even heard of a cover story? We need at least one plausible, recent, mutual Thwarting apiece, in case anyone asks questions. And we can’t chat like this out here — after a while, people start bumping into you. Meet me in the grotto at the end of Hogarth’s walk.”

“Crowley! I’m a virtuous woman! I can’t be seen going into a grotto with strange men _.”_

The demon sighed. “If _anyone_ knows how virtuous you are, it’s me. And if people here get the wrong idea, it’s nothing they won’t have thought about before.”

Crowley restored them both to human notice, Miss Fell tutted off in the suggested direction, and the demon followed at a safe distance. When he reached the grotto, the angel was aglow with indignation.

The unscheduled copy of _Horrid Mysteries_ had indeed been supposed to originate from supposedly-nice Mr. Fell. The origin of the tickets to Vauxhall Gardens was a Mystery, but since they were good girls at heart, Kitty and Tetty had left a note so that their parents didn’t spend the rest of the afternoon supposing they’d both been kidnapped. Mrs. Bamping’s heartfelt prayer for their safety had been intercepted by Aziraphale, who’d hurried to Vauxhall in female form, and spent the rest of the afternoon pretending to be Mr. Fell’s relative. For several trying hours, Miss Fell struck ill-intentioned swains with the cramp, and tried to persuade Kitty and Tetty that the shillings they’d found in their pockets should be spent on going home, and not on trinkets and marzipan. Frustrated beyond measure, Aziraphale at last miracled up two sedan-chairs, both of their crews mildly perplexed as to how they’d ended up there so fast.

Sedans were slightly dated and liable to make one seasick, but still glamorous beyond the sisters’ wildest dreams — and they were sensible enough to realise they’d have to go home _sometime_. They'd scrambled aboard, to be trotted back to Cheapside and dumped into the arms of their luckless parents.

After Crowley had stopped laughing, and Aziraphale had stopped glaring, the pair of them had called it quits, for there was much to discuss. When it came to Despond, the game was was once again afoot. Aziraphale had already been forwarded major Task, this time near York, where the angel (or rather, the demon) was expected to carry out a Vocational Calling in a travelling stage-coach, flipping one lucky winner’s _Weltschmerz_ into a determination to join the Church.

The Vocational Calling was scheduled to take place in a fortnight. There was just time enough to check on a couple of Tasks-in-progress, so Aziraphale could report the results to Gabriel, and then the angel and the demon would have to make their way independently Northwards and meet, quite fortuitously, in the same conveyance.

* * *

_Case III: An ever-fixèd mark_

A week later, two motes of light were zipping through the darkness over the River Thames, navigating the tricky sinuosity at Teddington. One glowed like a garnet, the other was frosty white, and their occult and ethereal gleams were mirrored in the darkly-sliding water. A human observer might have mistaken them for _ignes fatuii_ , apart from their outlandish speed (which was the reason they were glowing in the first place) and the fact that they were having an audible argument.

“Oh, _come on_!” objected the first mote. “Birds do it, angel. Bees do it. Even educated fleas do it!”

“Would it startle you to learn that I spend as little as time as possible contemplating the habits of the flea? And stop trying to change the subject. This isn’t how I intended things to work out at all, and you know it.”

“We stopped the pair of them Desponding, didn’t we? And in style,” added the red light, with a twinkle.

Aziraphale and Crowley were returning from checking on one of their Despond works-in-progress. They had both nipped up the Thames to Oxford in the misty hours of the morning, and were now making the less-demanding return journey to London by the same route, in darkness.

“But he was meant to become a missionary doctor,” moaned Aziraphale, “and more importantly, _she_ was intended to be a saint. She was going to take a vow of chastity!”

“So? He won’t chuck the medical do-gooding, will he? He’ll become a country doctor instead. And she won’t join a convent, because she’ll be a country doctor’s bride. It’ll be sickeningly wholesome — wildflower garlands, a yokels’ choir, and the squire on three-day cider bender until he proposes to the sexton. I thought you liked this sort of thing?”

Some weeks earlier, in the cause of Research, Crowley had got himself into a knotty argument with an impoverished Oxford medical student. The topic was theodicy: the notion that since God created everything, the existence of suffering must be the will of God too. The principal cause of the young fellow’s suffering had been a maiden of such high-minded purity that just thinking about how he’d like to pass the time with her would probably send him to Hell. But the fair one intended to take Holy Orders, and consequently, his situation was intolerable.

Crowley had got off to a poor start: the budding doctor, a sensible soul, had dismissed the demon’s still, small voice as a symptom of overwork caused by a whooping cough epidemic. Aziraphale offered hints that he would be willing to finish the job, but Crowley had refused. He’d zipped along to the object of the young medic’s supposedly-unrequited passion, who was writing earnest verses about self-abnegation and lilies. It took a demon’s eye for secrets to see where she wrote her _other_ poetry — in the margins, in pencil, and decidedly _not_ about lilies — and a demon’s ingenuity to suggest that perhaps True Service to God might include ministering to the sick. In Oxford. Perhaps.

As far as dispelling Despond went, the experiment had been a catastrophic success. Aziraphale and Crowley, who’d left the whole matter to prove itself out, had returned to find the pair enthusiastically betrothed.

“Last time I checked,” observed the ethereal mote, as they sped over midnight waters, “Hell was not a match-making agency.”

“But there’s the rub, angel — sometimes it is. We can’t stop Lust turning into the other thing, and you can’t stop the occasional saint with two backs. Besides which, you wanted those two to make a go of it just as much as I did. Maybe they’ll produce even holier progeny. Think of it as…as an investment.”

“An _investment!”_ snapped Aziraphale, startling the life out of a passing otter. The river beneath the two racing lights was now turning brackish and tidal, and began to give off a less than exquisite smell; they were approaching the outskirts of London.

“All right then, think of it as an act of faith.”

The angel’s chilly sparkle warmed a fraction. “Well. Um. Let me not unto the marriage of true minds, admit impediments. Love is not love — ”

“ — which alters when it alteration finds,” completed his fellow-traveller.

“But what about her poetry?” objected the bluish mote. “She was meant to take holy orders and write about her, um, ecstacies. It’s going to be hard for her to publish much as a doctor’s wife. Especially the sort of verse she might produce now _you’ve_ had a say in matters.”

“All her own talent, angel,” smirked the red mote. “She doesn’t need help from me. But I reckon she’ll still write, and publish under a pen-name, because humans are stupid about women writing stuff like that. Whereas your boy Shakespeare could bang on and on about tongues and tails and be called a titan of comedy.”

“Need I remind you that the lady is a daughter of Eve,” said Aziraphale, as the two of them passed the Horse-ferry, “and that it was Eve who was the _first_ human to partake of the Forbidden Fruit, rather than the second? There are Consequences.”

“Ha! Blame that nonsense on the Serpent, why don’t you? Heaven knows everyone else does.”

The two motes slowed down as they approached London proper, and the angel and the demon parted company near St. Paul’s Wharf, after assuming their human forms and settling on their next shared Despond job. Despite being miracled-out and clearly needing to spend time replenishing himself, Aziraphale showed signs of intending to spend yet another night writing, and Crowley un-demonically wondered if it wasn't selfish to leave his Adversary to it. But he knew that when Aziraphale set his mind to something, it was hard to deter him, soft though the angel might seem.

In any case, Crowley wanted at least three nights' sleep in what passed for his body before making a jolting carriage-trip over a hundred and fifty miles up the Great North Road to Retford (where the Hell was Retford?) whilst persuading some Despondent young gent that somewhere in God's plan, there was a special place for him. No travelling lights or Presence-work for this job: Heaven had specified that it should be done face-to-face.

To retain some smidgen of deniability, they'd agreed that Aziraphale would travel with the target of future Crowley's ministrations all the way from London, but Crowley would happen to fortuitously board the same coach at a staging-inn, the very morning of the Task. It would all require expert coordination. That, or a few miracles.

 _I’m the Old Persuader,_ Crowley told himself stubbornly, _and I’m fantastic at my job. We haven’t had a serious failure yet._

_It’ll be fine._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, my eternal thanks to all who read and/or comment, even if I get stupid anxious about checking for actual comments and sometimes don't reply for weeks.
> 
> **Notes and quibbles:**
> 
> The shilling shocker _Horrid Mysteries_ exists, and is one of the seven 'Horrid Novels' listed by Jane Austen in Northanger Abbey.
> 
> A note on London's ['watermen's stairs'](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watermen%27s_stairs): the Thames is very tidal and traditionally, river access was achieved by stairs leading down into the water; serviced by small, independently-owned water taxis. There were around a hundred officially-named watermen's stairs, and quite a few survive.
> 
> [The Prospect of Whitby](https://www.eastlondonhistory.co.uk/the-prospect-of-whitby-wapping/) is one of the oldest and most famous pubs in London. At the time Aziraphale and Crowley make their visit, I'm pretty sure it was called The Pelican - but that's just not such a well-known name.
> 
> The hot-tempered but fundamentally good sea-captain is based (slightly anachronously) on [Thomas Coram](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Coram). 
> 
> The zoomable online [John Roque 1746 map of London](https://www.locatinglondon.org/) is a pearl beyond price for Georgian-era London writers. Just fantastic. (Edit: in spite of which, I still mixed up the North-South positions of Limehouse Basin and Horseferry. Fear me, Peter Ackroyd).


	6. Blessings in Disguise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we check on how Gabriel's Despond studies are going, Crowley meets some birds of his own feather, and everything goes to Hell in a handcart.

**Light reading in Heaven**

High in the fabric of Heaven, past the point where it stopped resembling architecture, there was a bartizan with a sheen like a pearl. It was full of unfurnished space, the sole luxury its occupant permitted himself, and its walls tapered out into the Ethereal. It appeared deserted — until you looked up.

Before the Fall, when the Heavenly Host needed less guidance, the Archangel Gabriel had voyaged between galaxies as the Emanation of Yesod, fearful and honoured, pleasant and terrible. But whilst the Emanation of Yesod was a marvel of sacred geometry, a humanoid form had its advantages when turning a page. Gabriel’s ducal splendour had been replaced by monastic plainness, his wings were stowed neatly against his back, and he sat cross-legged on the sill of an aperture that looked out onto the Milky Way, studying a book.

The book, of course, was Emmanuel Swedenborg’s _De Caelo et Eius Mirabilibus et de Inferno, ex Auditis et Visis:_ ‘Heaven and its Wonders, and Hell From Things Heard and Seen’, and tucked inside it was Aziraphale's latest report. Gabriel was trying to knock the Principality's jottings on Despond into a policy fit to present to his fellow Archangels. He’d had doubts about Aziraphale, but it was a fact that he'd really got stuck into his field research. The problem was his conclusions, which veered between the unorthodox and the unusable. At the very least, they’d need a swingeing edit.

Take, for example, Aziraphale’s report on the Case of the Despondent Sea-Captain. Gabriel had tried his utmost to understand the psychological value of swearing. He knew that the popular swearwords fell into five groups — bodily functions, Hellish oaths, attempts to insult God, animal comparisons, and accusations of being born out of wedlock — and each seemed, to an Angel’s mind, to be clumsier than the last. Yet Aziraphale seemed to think the phenomenon worthy of study.

 _If feelings can be put into words,_ _however crudely,_ wrote the Principality, _then they acquire a form, and an opponent one can see and hear is less frightening than one that is invisible and silent. I grant that the form is rarely attractive. Some times it is foul, and at others, absurd. It is often expressed at the expense of others, as an alternative to blows._

_But I think that humans remember — not clearly, they do remember — that in the Beginning was the Word. They know that what can be uttered can be mastered, and so they are forever trying to put things into **words** , especially things that cannot be said. But even poets whose verses graze the Ineffable sooner or later resort to their chamber-pots to find words for the trials of human existence. One must be patient._

All of this bordered on lunacy. On the other hand, the last time Gabriel lost his temper with a mortal (that unfortunate business with Zachariah, father of John the Baptist) he’d struck the man mute for nine months, and quiet Vereviel had had to cover for him. _One must be patient,_ indeed. Not for the first time, the archangel tried to imagine being mortal. Not for the first time, he was as successful as a human imagining the life and times of a fruit fly.

Gabriel formed his thoughts on bad language into a note of starchy politeness _,_ and folded it into his copy of _De Caelo,_ ready for Aziraphale to find. Hopefully the Patron Saint of the Error-Prone was checking his Terrestrial copy regularly. Then he dismissed the book form his hand, unfurled his wings, and gave wordless orders to his stronghold:

_> Show me the battleground over which Heaven and Hell contend. Not the physical planet; show me the world of living souls. <_

Bright particles began popping into existence, and coalesced into a slowly-rotating sphere. It was a filigree of human lives, dense in some places, sparse in others, and as Gabriel hovered in front of it, his wingbeats disturbed the tiny motes not at all. At a glance, he knew how many of them there were, just as he knew how many angels there were in every legion of Heaven’s army. If Gabriel were human, people one quarter-millennium in the future would have called him a numbers man.

Metaphysicians claimed that one single life was as important to God as the whole Earth. In Gabriel’s opinion, that was a good reason to keep metaphysics out of policy decisions, but whatever the value of a human soul, there were more of them now than there’d ever been. It was a war of attrition, where the line between winning and losing was untidy, and most angels were not skilled at dealing with untidiness. There was only one angel known to Gabriel who was, and that one kept a bookshop in Soho and was more enthusiastic about his cover work than befitted a servant of God.

It was not a reassuring thought.

“Excrement,” said the Archangel experimentally, and was unsurprised to feel neither better nor worse. What must human lives be like, that _this_ was their cure for frustration?

* * *

**Shady work at the Tower**

Two days before Aziraphale and Crowley’s upcoming Task, a wherry pulled in at the Tower of London, and a passenger alighted on its scarred jetty. The passenger was a fellow of few words, but he paid the boatman handsomely to await his return, and to pay no attention to whatever he might see or hear.

It proved a wise investment. Crowley had hardly set foot ashore before there was a dismal roaring, braying, and cackling from the cages along the Southern wall of the fortress above him. The inmates of The Royal Menagerie of the Tower of London took a dim view of the humans who arrived to gawp at them — but a demon? That was intolerable.

The Menagerie boasted a dozen monkeys, a parrot, three lions, a pair of hyenas, and one very paranoid zebra. The meat required by the carnivores left scraps, the scraps attracted other creatures, and it was to these individuals that Crowley now bent his steps. The monkeys eyed him as he passed, but thought better of flinging shit, for nothing that smelled like a snake and walked like a man could be sensible to meddle with. Their instincts were sound. Having read every word of his copy of _Little Goody Two-Shoes,_ the demon was looking for a very specific partner in crime.

An unkindness of ravens, young and old, perched in a tree beside the zebra pen, eyeing Crowley with disdain. As far as they were concerned, the ruling dynasty here was the House of _Corvus corax._ Crowley leaned a conspirational arm on the wall of the enclosure.

“I’ve a commission for you lot,” he said. “Usual rates apply.”

Ravens made strategic allegiances with both the Divine and the Infernal, and they tolerated this trickster on the basis that he was, in some way, a being of their own feather. The problem was that Crowley was also a serpent, natural enemy of bird-kind, and all of them knew that too. Besides which, all ravens were snobs. Their ancestors had fed Elijah and protected Saint Vincent, and they’d not forgotten that in some mythologies, the First Raven had been given the task of dividing Light from Darkness. On the other side of the scale, the demons Andros, Malphas, and Stolos all had corvine aspects, and the lowest of those was ranked a Marquis, commanding twenty legions.

In a raven’s estimation, Crowley ranked nowhere, which meant he’d have to barter. He snapped his fingers, and a black feather appeared in his hand.

He laid it on top of the wall. “Come on. Luck of the devil for seven years, and no strings attached? I know humans who’d kill for this.”

The birds shuffled and cawed and tried to look unimpressed. They were tempted, but the thing about ravens was that not only were they snooty, but their sense of self-preservation was second to none. At last, an Elder Prophet of a raven with one blind eye plopped onto the coping-stones and sidled forth to inspect the goods, its head on one side. “Raark,” it pointed out, in tones that admitted no negotiation.

“All right, all right, you can share the luck between you. It’s a supervision job, so I’m not looking for anyone with nesting plans, but it’s pleasant work. The only downside is working with a child.”

“Raaark,” objected the Elder Raven.

“At least I’m honest. And it’s a nine-year-old, not a gorgon. Fledgling humans adore you lot.”

“Raaaaark!”

Crowley looked offended.

“Would I ask any of you to be a _pet?_ This is more along the lines of — a familiar. Wisdom and mischief, traditional stuff. Surely you can find me _someone?”_

The old bird thought it over, cast its good eye over the flock’s bachelors and spinsters, all trying their best to look unpromising, and chose one with a flick of its beak. A raven so young that its eyes were still grey, not jet-black, fluttered reluctantly across to perch on Crowley’s wrist. He tapped it on the head with his forefinger.

“Talk,” he commanded. “In English, if you’ve got any sense.”

The raven shuddered as the miracle took hold, regarded him with even greater displeasure, then evacuated its bowels, the results landing a careful quarter-inch shy of the demon’s gleaming shoes. There’s making a one’s feelings known to your employer — and then, there’s suicide.

“I’ll talk when I please, scale-aarse!” Its croak had a Cockney accent. “Arrrk!”

Crowley smiled thinly. “Take that line with everyone, and you’ll get a bonus.”

He carried his agent back to the jetty, where he gave it instructions and directions, then watched it fly off in the direction of Cheapside, home to the Family Bamping, and in particular, young master Josiah. The Vauxhall Gardens escapade needed a follow-up, and there would be a particular pleasure in using _Little Goody Two-Shoes_ against Aziraphale.

Before The Arrangement had come into play, Crowley had spent thousands of years honing his skills against his Adversary, and the angel must know that any self-respecting demon would follow one successful wile with another. Really, Aziraphale would only have himself to blame for this development in Josie’s education. If he wanted no _agent_ of Crowley’s to make an appearance in the lives of the Bamping family, he should have been more specific.

His skulduggery concluded, the demon continued his preparations for the mail-coach job, making a detour to Gunter's tea-shop in Berkeley Square (the second of the two message-drops suggested by Aziraphale), where lovers flocked to feed each other sweets. Here, he bought a twist of unwanted dragees, tipped the contents into the hands of a passing urchin, and unfolded the paper to read Aziraphale’s instructions, invisible to human eyes.

Crowley’s Task was to bestow Divine Consolation upon a young man whose faith in the value of his own existence it was considered important to restore, for if it was not restored, he might well be the last of his line. The one deviation from protocol would be the person performing the Consolation would be Crowley, whilst Aziraphale took the part of a fellow passenger.

The angel would leave London early the next day from Golden Cross, in the same conveyance as the young man destined for the Consolation, and spend the night inconspicuously at the staging-inn at Stilton. If Crowley took the night-mail from London that same evening — for mail-coaches travelled through the small hours — he should arrive at Stilton in time to board Aziraphale’s coach as if set off with fresh horses the next morning, bound for Retford, where the young man had family.

The only possible embuggerance was the involvement of equine transport. Oh, and the climate. As Crowley sauntered away from Berkeley Square, a few hailstones struck his coatsleeve, out of a clear sky.

 _Just Sspring weather,_ snapped the demon inwardly, as he incinerated the message _. You’re not having a stupid premonition, and the job will go like clockwork._

—⁂—

Early the next morning, the subject of Crowley’s ministrations folded his lanky frame into a packed stage-coach, panting from a sprint through London’s chilly streets. Despite getting out of bed (he would have sworn it) at five, he’d arrived so late at Golden Cross that he’d had to flag down his carriage as it rattled through the gateway. By some miracle, the coachman had actually stopped for him.

The subject was twenty years old. He wore an unfashionable grey overcoat buttoned up to his chin, and the sort of jumpy look that suggested he didn’t just fear God had it in for him, but had conclusive proof. A tow-haired eccentric in the opposite corner gave him a smile as he clambered aboard, but of most of the passengers favoured him with glares. The young man did his best to ignore the pack of them, and dug in his fob pocket for his watch, which still told him he had a plenty of time to spare.

It always did, except when it would be to his disadvantage to be early, for until his recent dismissal, he’d been the worst apprentice watchmaker in the length and breadth of England. The young man’s name was Onesiphorus Pulsifer, and it was Crowley’s borrowed Task to persuade him that he wasn’t a complete failure in life.

The demon had his work cut out for him.

* * *

**A spanner in the works on the Great North Road**

“Oh, goodness gracious! This wasn’t meant to happen _at all!”_

Once again, Aziraphale tried to psychically commune with four panicking equines, using a method devised by St. Francis of Assisi. Once again, he failed. It was his fifth go in as many minutes.

Aziraphale often told himself that some things are sent to try us. But getting chilled mud shot up one’s nose whilst attempting to wrangle four horses who’d decided to bolt in a hailstorm? That was one of the Almighty’s specials.To add to the angel’s woes, though it wasn’t yet a dark and stormy night, it soon would be. It was a miracle that the carriage-lamps were still lit. Principalities were powerful angels, but not built to manage many tasks at once; it was all Aziraphale could do to protect the coach, passengers, and horses, and hope that at least the latter knew where they were going.

A minor miracle glued Aziraphale to the driver’s seat of the stage-coach, next to the actual driver who was having a lovely dream about whatever he liked best. A more substantial miracle was fending off hypothermia for the driver, four outside passengers, and one hard-pressed angel whose hands gripped the reins of the spooked horses, ploughing along the morass that should have been the road between Stilton and Retford, their withers flecked with foam. It was all the stranger because Crowley wasn’t an automatic disaster around horses, unless he attempted to sit astride.

It had all been going so well when demon had boarded the coach on cue at Stilton, studiously ignoring him. The stage-coach went on its way along the Great North Road, closing in all day on Retford, where the appointed Divine Consolation was meant to coincide with the sunset. The first hint that all might not be going to plan was that what should have been a fine Spring evening became cold, then overcast, then sleety.

Only when Crowley raised an eyebrow at Aziraphale, and Aziraphale nodded fractionally in return — _best get on with the job_ — had Crowley cautiously probed the mind of the unhappy young man in the grey overcoat, seeking a placement for the Divine Consolation. Then everything had gone wrong very fast: there’d been a peal of cataclysmic thunder, and the horses had bolted as if hellhounds were after them. It took four quickfire finger-snaps to prevent an accident, send both the inside and outside passengers into a miraculous trance, and exchange Aziraphale for the outside passenger next to the driver, just in time to seize the reins from the driver’s nerveless hands.

The beleaguered angel risked a glance over his shoulder, envying the man beside him, snug inside a miracle that said it wasn’t _such_ a bad evening, the horses were making fair progress, and he should be in Retford in time for a pint. Within the coach, Crowley must must be struggling to convince the inside passengers that they too would soon stop for the night, and the fact that they could neither move nor blink in the meantime was nothing to worry about.

What a disaster.

 _But not yet an unmitigated disaster,_ Aziraphale told himself, _so buck up, and mitigate._ He skimmed the coach past an elm with a skill that a professional might have envied — except it was the tree that had shifted the critical few inches, and not the vehicle.

“Well, this is an unexpected development, Crowley!” he called, with as much vim as he could muster. “Really blows the cobwebs away!”

Aziraphale wasn’t _shouting_ , because that wouldn’t work in weather like this. He was using his Voice, in which all angels, Fallen or not, could communicate. Aziraphale’s own Voice wasn’t impressive — the Metatron’s whisper could famously be heard over earthquake, wind, and fire — but it had its uses when life got rowdy.

“Why’re you sssso cheerful?” Crowley shot back, with a sizzle like a quenching horseshoe. “Thisss is awful.”

No sooner were they past the elm when distantly, through the pelting hail, Aziraphale glimpsed a rising curve in the road. Probably nothing to worry about, but his Voice grew even more buoyant.

“Don’t say that, dear fellow, we’re just getting started. How’s everyone faring?”

“Having a lovely time, thanksss,” came the sardonic reply, “but there are ssixx in here, counting me. ’Srough on the consssentration, and one isn’t properly under. I might have to thump him.”

The coach lurched, and the rising curve seemed suddenly closer than it should be. It was too close to be a hillock, thought Aziraphale, as the smiling unconscious coachman nudged his shoulder and wet hedgerows whisked past the side of the coach. It was a jolly sight too close. What he needed was a little more light…just a little. No-one in their right mind would still be on the road in _this._

“Crowley, you mustn’t hit people,” reasoned the angel, as his halo bloomed discreetly about his head, “you’re bad at it. Besides, we’re on a holy mission!”

“You try telling thisss one that! Ow!”

As Crowley was berating him, there was a break in the hail, and Aziraphale saw the obstacle plainly. It was a hump-backed bridge, the sort of thing that would be charming in good weather, but now looked terribly steep, with vicious walls that would be ruinous to hit at speed. Some sense of self-preservation set the horses on a more central course, but only a miracle stopped the left-hand wheels being ripped clean off the coach.

After that narrow squeak, Aziraphale gave up on discretion. In rough weather, and with night closing in, he had better vision than a human, but he was no demon, and he urgently needed to _see._ His full halo sprang out, forever dishevelled, like a chrysanthemum of light.

And thus it was that the Phantom Coach of 1799 became a local legend, because in spite of Aziraphale’s best efforts, a few startled people _did_ see the coach bolting through the driving hail, the passengers unseeing, their faces set in expressions of deathly calm, as the apparition rounded corners with a hairsbreadth to spare. They saw the driver, who might or might not have had an actual head, or just a nest of flame that lit the road before and behind him. And uncanniest of all, they heard his cries, even above the squalling wind. You would expect such a thing to shriek like the damned, but what it exclaimed at intervals was —

“Whoa, there! Crivvens! Oh, b— _botheration!”_

—⁂—

Inside the coach, Crowley was having the sort of time that would be hilarious, if only it were happening to someone else. On the upside — and a runaway coach was a minor crisis, not the Hundred Years’ War — Crowley knew that Aziraphale would keep his nerve in this, because the angel was fearless when it came to protecting humans.

On the downside, Aziraphale was _driving,_ and that had never been a good plan since the invention of the wheel.

Crowley had faith that eventually, humans would devise transport that didn’t involve horses, and then he could drive, and Aziraphale could be his passenger, forever and ever. But for now, Aziraphale was _driving._ It was a miracle (or several) they’d all made it this far in one piece, especially as the young man due to be offered Divine Consolation was doing his best to bash Crowley’s head in. Luckily, he wasn’t very good at it.

“Ssssod your elbowsss, Pulsssifer! Blast your kneecapssss! Why do _I_ always get the pointy onesss!” hissed the demon, lying on the boards of the mail-coach in a space that was almost as cramped as a coffin, but far more full of dirty boots. Not to mention, flailing fists.

The carriage lurched, and the four passengers whose minds the demon _had_ been able to usher into temporary oblivion swayed in unison against seats worn shiny with use. They were in no condition to pass remarks, but even though they couldn’t see him, Crowley felt embarrassed. You wouldn’t have thought there was enough room in a mail-coach for a fight between the two gangliest men in England, he thought distractedly, wincing with the effort of trying to keep up several miracles at once.

“Bollocks!” swore the demon, as his spectacles were clawed off his face, and crushed beneath the heels of a yeoman farmer.

Onesiphorus Pulsifer was a mild-looking fellow, but his response to an incipient Divine Consolation had been to whack the red-haired gentleman who’d boarded the coach at Stilton in the face, just as whoever Upstairs was in charge of the weather had decided that a Spring hailstorm wasn’t ominous enough, and what was needed was a thunderclap that sounded like the Last Trump. The horses had bolted, the passengers had had to be finger-snapped into a benevolent trance, and the whole job had gone to Hell in a handcart.

And then there was the fellow who was supposed to be experiencing a Divine Consolation, and instead was getting a waking nightmare. Although not fully aware of himself, Pulsifer was flailing like a panicked sleepwalker. It had been more resistance than Crowley had anticipated — usually, they went under like _that_.

Crowley healed the man’s nosebleed, wrangled him into a sitting position on the left-hand side of the coach, and squeezed onto the opposite seat. Then he cautiously lifted the hypnosis until he was looking into a pair of frightened eyes. Crowley had concealed his own strange eyes by a miracle that said: ‘these are normal human pupils, of an unusually light hazel’, but maintaining it for any length of time gave him a headache. Angels can pass for human if they practice, but none of the Fallen can hide their true nature forever.

“Be not afraid,” instructed the demon, as the coach continued to career madly along the Great North Road. That line sounded more convincing when Aziraphale said it, and it only partly worked. Pulsifer stopped being afraid, and started being furious.

“My good Sir, we’re in a runaway coach in a thunderstorm!” he exclaimed, as the carriage rounded a bend in one weightless sweep, causing the unconscious woman next to him to lean sideways, as if in response to a question. He pushed her upright with a shudder. “Furthermore, our fellow passengers are insensible,and a violent demise seems likely! What, in Heaven’s name, are _you,_ that you tell me not to be afraid?”

 _What_ , Crowley noted, not _who_. This one was a little too perceptive.

“A ssssecret admirer,” replied the demon sarcastically, and attempted to snap his fingers again. If he couldn’t Console this nitwit, he might at least manage to put him into a trance while he came up with an emergency plan…but just as he attempted a finger-snap, the carriage jolted viciously and he was clouted by the elbow of the same gentleman whose boots had put paid to his spectacles.

“I find that hard to credit,” said Pulsifer, not someone to be put off his argument by imminent doom, “since no-one could possibly admire _me._ And furthermore…”

Crowley revised his opinion. This job was not only going badly, it was going strangely. Most of the time, he wasn’t much for auras, but there was something very odd about the one belonging to this young man. It wasn’t the usual gauzy emanation he associated with humans, but a near-tangible barrier to esoteric powers, be they holy or infernal. It was almost as if something was asserting a prior claim on young Pulsifer’s fate. Something that knew how to play a long game. Something _old._

The demon’s thoughts were interrupted by the blare of angelic trumpets, the start of a ghastly splintering, and a flash of light that fried his night vision for a couple of seconds.

“What, in the name of God, was _that_!” yelped the young man.

Probably a last-minute angelic miracle hitting a tollgate, thought Crowley. “Um. Maybe we’ve been struck by lightning?”

“Musical lightning? Do I resemble an idiot?”

Crowley was an expert liar, and the thing about lying was to keep as close to the truth as possible. Over thousands of years of risky business, he’d blown his cover a few more times than he’d care to admit to Aziraphale. As long as you skirted the ‘actual, literal demon’ bit, it was less bad than it sounded. Firstly, it was rare that anyone told their experience to another mortal soul, for fear of being thought mad. Secondly, deep down, most humans had an inkling that arcane forces existed, and spent a lot of subconscious effort ignoring them. It was just a question of breaking the fourth wall gently; you should _never_ do that.

“You do resemble an idiot, but appearances can be deceptive. No point trying to put one over on _you,_ is there?” A bit of flattery, then on to the main matter. “Sir, I am a spirit, fated to wander this Earth according to the Ineffable will of the Almighty, and I come to you bearing Divine Consolation.”

A little bit of truth, a little bit of the other thing. Technically none of it was _quite_ a fib. He’d cobble together some gladder tidings as they bucketed along, assuming that Aziraphale kept them on the road, and not in a gruesome tangle of limbs, luggage, and broken wheels.

Onesiphorus Pulsifer sat up, looked at his motionless travelling-companions, and waved a hand in front of the lady beside him, getting no response. He was younger than his raw-boned frame had led Crowley to believe, but with the bearing of someone who hadn’t had much luck in this life, and didn’t fancy his chances in the next one. His hands were freckled with small injuries: mostly burns, plus a carpenter’s flea under almost every fingernail.

“Are they going to be all right?” he asked, with real concern for strangers in his voice. Crowley hadn’t been expecting that.

“Trust me, they’re having a much better time than we are right now,” he replied, as hail pelted the windows. “With a bit of luck, and some effort from Yours Truly, they won't remember this. Like I said, I’m a ministering spirit.”

“In my opinion, Sir, you’re a lunatic. Either that, or I’m the lunatic, and this is some foul hallucination. And I didn’t know spirits had such sharp elbows.”

“Pot, meet kettle. Call me Anthony, by the way; all my friends do. Haven’t you heard of entertaining angels unawares?”

“That settles it! I _knew_ you were a loony. Besides, there are no angels called Anthony. Angels have Hebrew names.”

Crowley smiled sweetly. Strictly speaking, he hadn’t _said_ he was an angel, but that was the beauty of arguing with pedants: they’d snap at trifles, and then you could push an elephant past them.

“I didn’t say that was my _name,_ did I? I said, you can call me Anthony.” On a risky impulse, Crowley held out his hand — and against all probability, Onesiphorus Pulsifer reached out, across the jolting, crowded half-foot of space between them, and shook it.

“‘Pologies for the commotion,” said Crowley, leaning into the truth once again. _Remember, you’re meant to be an angel._ “I get all the difficult jobs. Trying to cheer people like you up isn’t easy.”

“Not going well, is it?” observed Pulsifer, again with a surprising amount of sympathy for someone he’d only just met. “It’s probably the curse.”

“The _what?”_

“Family heirloom. Shows up when you’ve set your heart on something, and spoils it. Reckoned if I was humble and God-fearing, it might pass me by,” said the young man wryly, spreading his injured hands. “Could’ve saved myself the trouble. Until last week, I was a watchmaker’s apprentice. You can see how well _that_ went.”

“A curse,” groaned Crowley. “No-one tells me anything. The Consolation must’ve rebounded — but I’ll sort it out,” he added, radiating professionalism. “I’m good with curses. Have faith.”

Aziraphale’s brief hadn’t mentioned a curse. But when Crowley checked the young man’s aura again, there it was: something had marked his existence like a brand, several generations back. Most curses didn’t have enough ooomph for multiple generations, but this one meant business. Lovely work, but also, a pain in the arse. Hell was a pro-curse establishment, and hauling up enough power to mess with something like _this_ might be noticed.

Crowley gave the curse a prod, and in return, he felt the prickle of the malediction that had caused it: ‘ _Marke well the fate of alle who meddle with suche as theye do notte understande’,_ its echo authoritative and female. Nothing daunted, he tried again, and this time, it wasn’t a prickle. It was a jolt that slammed the demon and the human against the roof of the coach in a gravity-defying embrace, making Crowley’s instincts of self-preservation shriek in his ears.

_ no.no.nonononono! stopstopstop! stop NOW! _

Crowley had mixed feelings on the notion that since Gods knows everything, She knows everyone’s ultimate fate, but he did sort-of believe in Destinies (for example, he believed it was the Destiny of one Anthony Crowley to always scrape through). He believed that whatever game God was playing with the Earth, it had rules: secret rules, complex rules, unfair rules, but rules that — whether or not She was responsible for setting them — existed by permission of the game’s Creator. Until one of those had fulfilled its purpose, you’d have an easier time shifting the Matterhorn.

“What in God’s name was _that?”_ whimpered Onesiphorus Pulsifer, as they thudded back onto the seats. “And could you kindly not do it again?”

“It was me, trying to break the curse,” said Crowley, disentangling himself. “And I _should_ be able to, I’m not the best angel — ”

“I can see that. My luck never fails.”

The demon was stung. “That’s not the reassson!” he hissed, before reminding himself again that he was in Aziraphale's role, though Pulsifer would have to be an idiot if he didn’t have his doubts by now. “I think it’s because you’re — chosen.”

“Chosen for what? A lifetime of failure?”

“You have to look at the big picture,” ad-libbed the demon. “You’ve spent years telling yourself you’re only humble and God-fearing to avoid the curse, but in my opinion — and I admit, this isn't a common condition — you’re _actually_ humble and God-fearing. And that’s your problem, right there. God _loves_ people too humble to know they’re any good. Or at any rate, God loves to picks them for out special tasks. So it might not be a curse at all. It might be part of the divine plan.”

Crowley had, of course, no evidence for these claims. He was fibbing so hard that he was mildly surprised the Almighty didn’t peel open the roof of the coach, pick him up by his collar, and crush him between Her fingernails, like some species of demonic louse.

“Are you saying being clumsy is God’s plan for me? If those are your glad tidings, you can keep ‘em.”

“Well, it might not be a plan for _you,_ exactly. It might be for your descendants — ” blurted Crowley, and then blessed himself inwardly. No-one was likely to be cheered by the news that the thing stopping them from achieving their dreams would be important to people they’d never meet. No-one apart from Onesiphorus Pulsifer, who was terrible at technology, but had a logical mind and a long, awkward history of romantic rejection.

“Descendants? But that means — ”Pulsifer’s eyes widened, “to have _descendants,_ I’ll have to get married, and that’s both unwise and unlikely, because — ”

“Yes, yes, I know,” said Crowley. “Whenever you’ve set your heart on something, the curse spoils it, and also, you don’t want to lay the curse on any son of yours. But I don’t recall anything against someone setting their heart on _you._ And you know what? I’ve met some completely curse-free people who were far, far less likable than you. And being cursed isn't _so_ bad,” he added reassuringly. "At the very least, you're not the same as everyone else."

It didn't quite stick.

“Met a lot of cursed people, have you?” asked the worst horologist in England, with more starch in his tone than befitted someone addressing an angel. “And another thing. Do angels really say ‘bollocks’? Because I don’t remember that bit from Bible study — ”

“Mysterious ways,” snapped Crowley, and clicked his fingers in the nick of time. Pulsifer’s suspicious look glazed over, and finally — finally — he went into the same benign trance as his travelling-companions, just as the coach slowed, the squalling wind eased off, and Aziraphale’s ever-cheery voice could be heard once again, praising the horses for being so clever and knowing just the right line to take. Thank Satan, the angel had had the sense not to actually _drive,_ but just to miracle potential disasters out of the way.

Crowley sagged against the greasy leather that padded the coach, and let out a long breath. Due to the angel’s indefatigable influence on all creatures great and small, it seemed that they’d made it through this lunatic episode intact. And he’d even managed to cheer up young Pulsifer, after a fashion, though the idea of administering a Divine Consolation had been left behind on the highway.

Once the coach was proceeding at normal speed through soggy Nottinghamshire, Crowley pulled out his _memento mori_ pocket-watch, flipped open its cranium, and attempted to work out the time. The problem was not the poor light, but proximity to Onesiphorus Pulsifer for more than five minutes: the watch had stopped, in spite of having a newfangled lever movement that cost more than the macabre case. Crowley blessed the thing until it started again, then stared out of the coach window at the belated sunset.

“Aziraphale?” he said cautiously, using his own Voice, the words threading straight to the angel’s awareness. “We must be only a couple of miles from Retford. Assuming everyone’s all right out there, you should think about waking them up. I’ll do the same for the inside lot.”

“Dear fellow!” came the reply. “So, you’ve completed the Task? Congratulations! Not that I ever doubted we’d come through.”

Crowley snapped his fingers in synchrony with Aziraphale’s. Within half a minute, the passengers were yawning and stretching, within a minute, they’d got stuck into conversation again, and before five minutes were up, they were arguing volubly about the proper amount to tip the driver.

By the time the coach was on the outskirts of Retford, only Onesiphorus Pulsifer was quiet, gazing out of the coach window into an evening from which lights fitfully emerged — glimpses of candles and lanterns, illuminating human dwellings. He seemed to be in a brown study, but when Crowley checked more closely, Pulsifer was using the window’s reflection to keep an eye on him. Smart lad.

 _Hold on to your doubt_ , thought the demon, _it’s a better servant than your faith. And if your family’s been chosen for some special purpose, let’s hope it’s a long way in the future._

—⁂—

When the stage-coach from London finally trundled beneath the archway of The Swan and Bottle in Retford, it was spattered with mud, as were the outside passengers — but against all odds, it was more or less on time. The driver was whistling, the passengers were conversing, and the horses were miraculously unwinded, which was all more than could be said for Mr. Fell. He sagged against the driver’s shoulder, running a small miracle to prevent the man from asking himself, not unreasonably, why a dark, bearded fellow in shoddy had been sitting on his left when the coach departed, and a fair, clean-shaven one in twill had been in the same spot when it arrived.

Apart from that, the angel was all in. Keeping a dozen people and four panicking animals unscathed when they should have been killed twenty times over had taken its toll on him. He was so miracled-out that he hardly noticed when Crowley helped him from his seat, until he felt warmth trickling back into the marrow of his bones. A small demonic miracle, its heat no fiercer than mulled wine, and yet another bit of Crowliana to disguise as his own, then write up for Gabriel.

For when Crowley needed to be, he was kind. But since he hated the idea of being kind, he used every trick in the book to disguise it. It was possible he hadn’t deliberately created this underhand kindness, one that asked for neither thanks or even acknowledgment, but Aziraphale had seen it accepted by souls too sick for sympathy.

The demon must have had a rough time of it inside the carriage, because his spectacles were missing, and when he snapped another pair into being, Aziraphale saw that he, too, was tired.

“Well, I feel better already,” said the angel brightly, stamping his feet on the cobbles, and rubbing the circulation back into his hands. “I have to admit, I had doubts about whether you could bring the job off after that unfortunate incident with the horses. But cometh the hour, cometh the, um, demon.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” said his Adversary drily. The two of them watched the other passengers disembark from the coach, all slightly discomfited that they’d spent the last part of journey daydreaming, and barely exchanged a word with anybody. Some headed to homes in the town, and the rest — their journeys not yet complete — to parlours of the Swan and Bottle itself, whose bow-fronted windows seemed to bulge from the activity within, as if they might pop at the seams.

Onesiphorus Pulsifer got out of the coach last. The look on his young, careworn face was thoughtful, but it was also hopeful. Just under the archway of the inn, a woman was waiting for him with folded arms — his mother, no doubt, come to bring her maladroit son home. Pulsifer inclined his head to Crowley, very slightly. And then he straightened his back and was gone, to explain his failings to his family, who would doubtless be disappointed in him, but there are worse things to be than the family disappointment. The golden child risks not living up to expectations; the child of whom nothing is expected has room to work on.

“There he goes,” said Aziraphale softly. “Crowley, we actually did it!”

“We certainly did _something._ I was hoping you could explain the bit when there was flash of Glory, and I wondered if the next stop was going to be the queue for a new corporation.”

“Sorry about that. Unexpected tollgate. I’m fairly sure I miracled it all back together, and let’s just hope nobody noticed.”

“Pulsifer noticed. Know what he called it? Musical lightning.”

“He sounds an imaginative lad. I wish I’d met him properly.”

Crowley wondered how he was going to contrive to mention that when it came to fulfilling Aziraphale’s most recent Task, well — he hadn’t exactly _failed,_ had he? He’d just _succeeded differently._ But the awkward fact remained that whatever Onesiphorus Pulsifer had taken away from their meeting, it wasn’t a Divine Consolation, or even a minor blessing. Crowley wouldn’t like to bet that the former worst watchmaker in England actually believed him to be holy at all.

As the angel and the demon stood watching the coach passengers depart, a man in a low-crowned hat went barrelling between them, heading for the door of the inn, on a mission for a hot meal and a crib for the night.

“ ‘Scuse me, gennlmen! No rest for the wicked, if the last bed’s sold.”

This newcomer’s wet boots,and the muddy bottom of his coat, showed he’d arrived on foot. The massive satchel clapping at his back proclaimed him one of England’s tribe of chapmen — travelling salesmen of pamphlets and ballads, of penny holinesses and penny sensations, none of it literature, but the readiest reading in England, next to the Bible. Aziraphale stepped aside for him, but alas for the chapman, his satchel-strap caught on a stray nail on the door-frame, and the bag went sailing towards a vast puddle of melting hail and stable-muck.

“Oh, the Devil take it!” He exclaimed. Before the oath was sworn, someone was handing the satchel back to him, miraculously dry, and by the time he looked up to see who owned such quick reflexes, Crowley had discreetly acquired a satchel of his own, of the sort a fellow pamphlet-slinger might own.

“Thankee, friend,” said the chapman. “Not that the stuff in here’s worth saving. Don’t come back ‘til you’ve made a tidy profit, they said.” He shook his head. “A tidy profit! On dross a year old!”

“Not _dross,”_ corrected Crowley, patting his own freshly-miracled satchel, _“collectible editions._ Reserve stock for the discerning customer. After a few ales, who’ll know?”

A wry smile. “Collectible editions? Not heard that one before. You in the trade?” added the chapman, suddenly competitive.

“Sold the last batch days ago. My Master supplies me with all the best tunes,” boasted Crowley. He shifted closer to the light, so the other man could see the flash of cut steel on his buttons, and his whole posture expressing, _Out of the two of us, friend, the somewhat bigger fish is me._

The chapman drew himself up to his full height, which was five foot four. “Then you have a better Master than I, Sir — and unless he can offer me a position, I’ll bid you good-night.” He ducked into the beery, human commotion of the inn to sort out his pamphlets, which he would shortly find them to have more retail potential than he remembered.

That was another nice thing about Crowley, thought Aziraphale warmly: his anger rarely lasted. The mercurial demon got it out of his system in a way no angel never could. For instance, the way he was looking now, spectacles illuminated by lamplight streaming from the windows of the inn, and the vestige of a smile on his lips, was…actually, it was highly suspicious.

“Are my senses deceiving me, or did you tempt that man to rivalry in the selling of vulgarities?”

“You’re a fine one to talk! You’re worn ragged — but you still made sure his hymnals will sell like hot cakes.”

Aziraphale didn’t deny it. “We’ve both had a trying day. I suggest we spend the night here, and go our separate ways in the morning. Besides which, I really should write up my Despond research for Gabriel, and before I cudgel my brains on the topic, I propose to refresh them. Care to join me?”

“Are you trying to _tempt_ me, Aziraphale?”

“Tempt you? Heavens, no. If all goes according to plan, I’ll be thwarting you. _Qui bibit, dormit; qui dormit, non peccat; qui non peccat, sanctus est,”_ recited Aziraphale piously. “ _He who imbibes, sleeps; he who sleeps, does not sin; he who does not sin is holy_. Q.E.D.”

“You old sophist!” laughed Crowley. “You hardly ever sleep, and you have no idea what people get up to in their dreams. But — I accept.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Destination of coach on the Great North Road changed from York to Retford, because for some reason it's important for the distances covered in a two-day angel/demon road trip to be slightly plausible.]
> 
> This will be the only appearance in this tale by the beleaguered Onesiphorus Pulsifer. I thought it would be nice for an ancestor of the human GO cast to make an appearance, Newt's surname has gone unbroken down the Pulsifer male line and so makes such a person instantly recognisable, and I'm fascinated by Newt's mysterious powers over tech, and have sometimes wondered how he ended up like that.
> 
> Anyone captivated by the Golden Era of coach-travel in Britain (which lasted a very short period - it was just getting going in 1799, and the great Victorian railways killed it dead) will like the amazingly thorough works of [Charles Harper](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/39133), 1930's historian of the stage-coach, available on Project Gutenberg ('Stage-Coach and Mail in Days of Yore' is a writer's goldmine).


	7. The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley and Aziraphale spend the night at a coaching-inn...and discover that no good deed goes unpunished.

The perfect English ale should be as honest as bread, as clear as amber, and as bittersweet as nostalgia for the Good Old Days. The brew served in the Swan and Bottle probably wasn’t in that league, but it would have to do. Besides, of the eleven coaching-inns in Retford, all of them full due to the poor weather, the Swan and Bottle happened to be the one in which Aziraphale and Crowley had snagged a dining-bench as comfy as church-pew. At least it was close to the fire.

The Swan’s ram-packed taproom was almost as warm as a Turkish bath, if instead of roses, said bath was perfumed with stewed mutton, Orinoco baccy, and the wolfhound smack of wet wool coats. Well-heeled travellers could afford rooms in which one’s coat could be set on a clothes-horse, but those anticipating a night in shared rooms were more circumspect, and were drying theirs over the backs of their benches. Aziraphale, sitting alone and keeping Crowley’s place for him whilst the sharp-elbowed demon found them liquid sustenance, would gladly have miracled the coats dry, were it not for his budget-defying performance earlier that day. Fending off disaster from a runaway coach with a demon inside it could, at a pinch, be passed off as a Thwarting; an evening supping ale could not. Best not draw Heaven’s notice to any more apparently-frivolous miracles.

Which meant he couldn’t do much about the singing, and that was unfortunate. Having oiled their throats with stingo, the assembled company had got to the stage of believing they could all sing like nightingales. This was, in no small measure, the fault of the chapman, who was stranded overnight at the Swan and Bottle and making the best of a bad job. He’d hawked his stock high and low, doing a roaring trade in hymnals that had been lingering for months, as well as all the drinking songs — and their new owners seemed hellbent on trying every single one of them. Aziraphale, blessed with celestial perfect pitch, just smiled and bore it like Job.

‘ _At each Inn on the road I a welcome could find,_

_At the Fleece I'd my skin full of ale._

_The Two Jolly Brewers were just to my mind,_

_At the Dolphin I drank like a whale,’_

_At least it scans,_ thought the angel, who was never sure whether he or his Adversary was ahead in the realm of cheap literature. On the one hand, chapbooks and ballads promoted literacy, fellowship, and the sort of faith that saw Heaven as a nicer Earth, with no suffering and free beer — an easier sell than gowns and harps, and about as accurate. On the other hand, they also ran long to criminality and bawdiness, and their response to the news that the meek would inherit the Earth was the liveliest incredulity. On the whole, he was forced to call it a draw.

‘ _Tom Tun at the Hogshead sold pretty good stuff,_

_They'd capital flip at the Boar,_

_And when at the Angel I'd tippled enough —_

_Why, I went to the Devil for more!’_

As if on cue, Crowley came weaving his way back through the throng, which parted instinctively before him, and closed up behind. He held a foaming tankard in each hand, a half-loaf under one arm, and a wooden platter under the other. He set these prizes down next to a mysterious parcel wrapped in muslin, the property of Aziraphale himself.

“I’ve got possibly-bad news,” announced the demon, stowing his long legs under the table, “I’ve got less-than-good news, and then, I’ve got awkward news. Which d’you want first?”

Aziraphale took a fortifying sip of ale. “The less-than-good first, if you please.”

“The cupboard’s bare. ’S this blassted weather. I thought it was supposed to be bloody April, but since it’s more like January, everyone’s stuck in Retford ‘til tomorrow, and there’s not a sausage to spare in town. So this is dinner, unless you want to risk a culinary miracle. They’re more up your street than mine.”

Aziraphale shook his head. “It’s been a taxing day, and I don’t want to attract notice from Upstairs, any more than you do from Below. But half a loaf is better than none — and happily, I have come prepared.” He unwrapped his parcel with a flourish, revealing a shapeless object veined with mould. “Behold!”

Crowley stared. “What, in the name of Beelzebub, is _that?_ ”

“Just a little something I picked up Stilton. A highly exclusive cheese. Though I admit that when I bought it, it wasn’t quite so flat.”

Crowley took a crumb of highly exclusive cheese one one fingertip, tasted it, and took a quick swig from his tankard. But he seemed to have second thoughts, for he conjured a pocket knife from somewhere, cut two rounds from the loaf, then slapped the bread together with a slice of Stilton in the middle. Over nearly six millennia, Aziraphale had rarely seen Crowley create anything edible, unless you counted that ghastly Roman trend of adding floral syrup to one’s wine. Typically for Crowley, however, the dish was undemanding to prepare, and so newfangled that Aziraphale hadn’t got a word for it. It was the least couth culinary display he’d seen for years, and the angel found himself both appalled and fascinated.

“All the rage with the gambling set,” explained his Adversary. He cut the object into unequal quarters, and took the smallest. “If you don’t get up to eat, you go bankrupt all the faster.”

“How…efficient.” Aziraphale took a bite, and his eyes watered. The Stilton was certainly potent. “Does this preparation have a name?”

“It’s called a sandwich. Welcome to the Eighteenth Century, or what’s left of it, and we hope you enjoy your stay.”

“Where _do_ you find these curious terms of expression?” asked Aziraphale, as the singers finished massacring the first verse of ‘The Merry Mail-Coach Guard’, and started in on the second.

“Who knows?” Crowley shrugged. “Perhaps they’re a punishment from God.’

“Perhaps, but I have an inkling that some of our lot have it much the same. No second-guessing the Ineffable, and all that, but Gabriel has an odd way of putting things when when he’s preoccupied. Uses odd phrases, sometimes — and not deliberately. When he visited the bookshop, he threatened me with a large time.”

Crowley almost spat out his ale. “Did he indeed?”

“Um…no, that’s not quite right. It was the ‘big time’. Isn’t Time generally quite big, though?” Aziraphale gestured expansively, sandwich in hand.

“I think it meansss he’d have you promoted. No more terressstrial duties. And if he’sss clever enough to usse _that_ as a threat, he knows you too well.”

“But thanks to your efforts, dear fellow, he won’t do it — not while he thinks I’ve stumbled on a secret cure for Despond. The only trouble is that you were at work _inside_ the coach, and I had to miracle myself _outside,_ so I completely missed how you managed the Divine Consolation. You’ll have to tell me the details, so I can patch something together.”

Crowley’s fingers drummed the table, his sandwich suddenly nowhere to be seen, and Aziraphale wondered for an awkward moment if the demon had swallowed it whole.

“Funny you should mention the Consolation, angel, ‘cos that’s the possibly-bad news.” Crowley took a deep breath. “The Consolation wouldn’t take. I had to let young Pulsifer go without.”

“It wouldn’t…take?” said Aziraphale, in confusion. “But the boy seemed — well, not happy, but reinvigorated. Newly determined. Are you telling me that in spite of all appearances, we’ve failed?”

“Not _failed_ , it’s just that I may have muddled through with some advice of my own. You handed me a tricky job back there.”

It took all the rest of the sandwiches, and another round of drinks, for Crowley to recount how his efforts at Divine Consolation had bounced off young Pulsifer’s hereditary curse, and describe the alternative treatment he’d concocted for the young man’s despondency.

“…ssso I may, just conceivably, have told Master Onesiphorus Pulsifer that what seems like a terminal blight on his existence is a sign that his bloodline's been chosen by God, and his life has a special purpose.”

“And he believed you?” asked Aziraphale, with more wonderment than was proper. “Good Lord. He really must be one of Her innocents. But…what if it’s not true?”

“Do I catch a whiff of scepticism?” Crowley made a play of sniffing the air. _“You_ once told me that the worse start a person gets in life, the better their shot at Heaven, so you can’t blame me for using the line myself. And I didn’t rely completely on platitudes. Young Pulsifer’s all fired up that if he’s going have descendants, he’ll have to get married — and I didn’t even point out the marriage part wasn’t necessary. So I say we call it a win.”

“Call it a win? You were supposed to bestow Divine Consolation!”

“Well that’ssss Heaven all over, isn’t it! Divine Consolation’s the real thing, everyone else’s is counterfeit, and the purpose of life can’t just be to bloody _live._ And you didn’t even warn me about the curse! Did you reckon the previous Tasks were too easy?”

A dimension away from the taproom of the Swan and Bottle, feathers ruffled around Crowley’s shoulders, and Aziraphale realised that the demon was hurt. It seemed that he truly believed — ferociously, and without apology — that purpose of life was to live, just as deeply as Aziraphale believed in God’s Plan.

“Crowley, I would have warned you about Mr. Pulsifer’s little inconvenience, but I promise you, I didn’t know about it. And I’m pretty sure that if Upstairs didn’t warn _me,_ they had no idea either. It does seem very curious,” said the angel, furrowing his brow. “Not that I’m going to second-guess the Almighty.”

“Anyway, I got the job done,” muttered his Adversary, “and from Pulsifer’s perspective, isn’t that what counts? All point-scoring for Heaven and Hell aside?”

“It is what counts,” said Aziraphale, with all the warmth of which he was capable, “and if you managed it with a minimum of miraculous interference, then that is to your own credit, and the boy’s as well. I apologise for giving the opposite impression. You didn’t go about things how I would have done, but I might have failed, whereas you succeeded differently. Perhaps it’s in—”

“Don’t say it,” growled the demon, “ ‘cos if you say _that word_ again, I’m going to turn into a snake right here, so help me Satan.”

“—tuitive. I was only going to add, perhaps it’s intuitive. Your knack of knowing what to say. Because if you gave young Pulsifer the the notion that an ordinary life can be magnificent, I won’t gainsay you. Things haven’t turned out so badly after all.”

Crowley set down his tankard. “You’ve not yet heard the awkward news. That bastard chapman — ”

“Don’t say that, dear fellow,” objected Aziraphale, now in the convivial state in which everyone was a dear fellow. “That man is the salt of the partly-literate Earth, and I won’t hear a word against him.”

“ — as I was saying, that utter rat bastard used his pamphlet-slinging profits to snag the last decent room in this place. So unless you want to resort to miracles, what we’ve got is one allegedly well-aired bed in a room on the second floor. I had to pay extra to get them to carry up coal.”

“Oh,” said the angel, a little too brightly, “I see. Well, it’s not as if either of us actually need to sleep. I’m sure we can work something out.”

—⁂—

The room on the second floor wasn’t as bereft of creature comforts as Crowley had feared, since the coals in the grate had actually been lit in advance, and a single candlestick set on the mantelpiece, with a taper to light it by. But it was spartan enough — apart from the promised bed, there was a table with a bowl and ewer to serve as a wash-stand, and in the corner opposite, a rush-bottomed chair. In the stables below, horses whickered softly in their sleep.

As soon as he’d crossed the threshold, Aziraphale pulled the chair over to the table, set the washing paraphernalia on the floor, and spread out his working notes.

“Burning the midnight oil, angel?” said Crowley, touching the taper to the grate, and then to the candle, though ordinarily he’d have lit it with the snap of his fingers.

“No choice, I fear. I’ve some business in the Lake District, and I simply _must_ send something to Gabriel just as soon as I set foot in London.”

“What business in the Lake District?” said Crowley, who was examining the bed with disfavour. “Look, I’ve got to drop in on Manchester after this, so I can go with you as far as Wakefield, but I didn’t know _you_ had a second Task up here.”

“Just a quick visit to an old acquaintance. I encountered him in Paris, back in ‘72. He was quite the Revolutionary idealist, but he returned to Britain before the Terror, and the news of it knocked him sideways. I’ve heard he’s fallen on hard times, so I thought I might drop in on him. Encourage him to write, perhaps.”

“As Consolations go,” mused Crowley, “that one sounds _lots_ easier than Onesiphorus unbudgeable-curse Pulsifer. Thanks very much.”

“Crowley, the man is a poet. He might divine your infernal nature, and besides — ”

“ — and besides, he isn’t actually on your Task list, is he?” guessed the demon. “He’s just your _literary friend_ , like good old Shakespeare, and Geoffrey of Monmouth, and Euripedes, and — ”

Aziraphale, already perusing his notes, glanced up mildly. “On that topic, do you know a rumour I heard when I was hunting the dreaded Black Knight? I heard he secured a castle’s loyalty by his talent for drinking anyone under the table, then dancing so badly upon it that the court jester couldn’t compete. Still, I’m sure you were merely fomenting evil, out there in the wilds of Wessex. Did you _like_ any of those people? Hell forbid!”

For once, Crowley found himself without a rejoinder. “Fair point. As you were, angel.” He pulled back the thin blanket, dropped wearily onto the bed, and yelped. The straw-stuffed mattress was so well-used it had a human-shaped depression in it, like a shallow sarcophagus, and was about as congenial to lie on. He thumped the thing into some semblance of comfort, but sleep was impossible, at least in the form he was currently in, because Aziraphale was Deep In Thought.

Crowley squinted over to where his travelling companion was jotting notes by the light of his own halo, making the shadows of the room look even drabber. The angel did use actual ink when humans were around, and now he took from one pocket a small portable inkwell, in order to economise on miracles. Soon his neat chancery script was unrolling from his quill, line after line of angelic reasoning on the very human topic of despair.

“D’you know, Aziraphale, I can actually feel you thinking,” said Crowley, after the angel had written without stopping for about an hour.

What he didn’t say was that he could also _see_ Aziraphale thinking, the inner structure of his halo looping itself into curlicues that were almost like a crib to the angel’s ideas. It was a fascinating process, but for the past twenty minutes, Crowley had seen the dancing thoughts bumping into each other and repeating themselves. Even an immortal can’t cogitate indefinitely, and there is a reason God Herself took the Seventh Day off.

“Don’t lie to _me_ , you deceiver,” said the angel distractedly. The nib scratched onwards.

“It’s the truth. You’re like an overwound clock-spring, you’ve been like that for weeks, and you blew through the miracles like nobody’s business, making sure that coach didn’t hit anything. You must be absolutely knackered.”

“My dear fellow,” said the angel, with maddening abnegation, “I once read for three consecutive weeks. You take a nap if you need it.”

Aziraphale’s little finger tapped the tabletop twice, a motion which would have escaped the notice of anyone who couldn’t literally see in the dark — but Crowley caught the surreptitious miracle in the air between his finger and thumb, and deflected it through the floor, where it hit an insomniac lawyer who would shortly have a lovely dream about whatever he liked best.

“Oi! No frivolous miracles! Don’t try your golden slumbers trick on _me_. This particular old deceiver recently spent eleven miles on the floor of a runaway stage-coach, in the arms of the worst horologist in England, attempting to convince him that the Almighty has some Ineffable Holy Plan for him. Let me tell you, that man was pointy, even by my standards. All elbows and earnest convictions.” The demon winced at the memory. “And I _still_ feel better than you look right now. I am literally begging you to rest.”

The angel nodded politely, as Crowley had known he would, and then ignored his protestations, as Crowley had also known he would. Fine. That was how it was going to be. Two could play the old self-sacrifice game.

Crowley lay in the bed and thought about his true enemy: not God, but boredom. Boredom that had filled the halls of lower Heaven like syrup. Boredom so intense that couldn’t _just_ be boredom, it had to be the first clue in a treasure hunt, a hint that somewhere, a fabulous party was in progress, and a certain fabulous angel only needed to brag an invitation to it. It was not an inkling that had worked out well for Crowley. The treasure hunt had lead him vaguely downwards, or so it had seemed at the time, all the way to the one door that had abruptly clicked shut behind him, and left him alone, in a place from which there was no escape but one.

Enough of that. It was a long time ago.

Crowley thought about interminable speeches. He thought about the conjugation of verbs. He thought about lives worn away behind the plough, about bread without butter, about eggs without salt. He thought about sitting on a chilly pew while a priest with his back to you play-acts the Last Supper, he thought about the rote prayers that were God’s gift to demonkind, and then he thought about the most Ineffably dull verse in the whole Bible, the verse so boring it could overpower even a studying angel. Then he opened one eye a fraction, and focused his thoughts on Aziraphale. The angel yawned, and tousled his halo.

 _Now, these are the Names of the Tribes,_ recited the demon silently, _and of the lands allotted to them._

_From the north end of the coast of Hethlon, as one goeth to Hamath, and from the border of Damascus to the edge of Hamath: these are the sides, from the East Side unto the West Side, of the portion allotted to Dan._

_And by the border of Dan, from the East Side unto the West Side, there shall be a portion allotted to Asher._

_And by the border of Asher, from the East Side unto the West Side, there shall be a portion allotted to Naphtali._

… _Naphtali to Manasseh…Manasseh to Ephraim…Ephraim to Reuben…Reuben to…_

It was unnecessary to get as far as Judah; Aziraphale’s curly head was already resting on his arms, and a trace of ink pooled beneath his pen. He certainly seemed to be asleep, but Crowley spent ten minutes making sure of this, synchronising his pulse and breathing to the angel’s, and watching the halo fade. The necessary snap of Crowley’s fingers was no louder than an ember dropping from the grate.

He came round immediately, sitting at the table, his own head resting on his arms, and the slumbering angel neatly transferred to the bed. _Ha. Take that, you self-sacrificing bastard._ Aziraphale’s working notes on the care and treatment of Despond lay undefended on the table, in a script almost as even as print.

Crowley knew that thousands of years ago, Aziraphale had fallen in love, and that the object of his affection was the written word. In contrast, demon had been caught napping by literacy. As a human construct, and not a law of nature, it couldn’t be wholly mastered by miracles, and so he hadn’t bothered — until he’d found out that a certain angel had been swotting up since they’d last crossed paths in Sumeria. Crowley, who was a quick study when he needed to be, had taken a crash course in cuneiform in Nippur.

In every writing system that had risen to ubiquity, then collapsed into disuse, Aziraphale wrote like an angel: tidy, and a little on the smug side. Crowley would know that handwriting anywhere. He _had_ known it anywhere, since the dawn of the Arrangement, on notes tucked behind the rafters of colleges, or between the flagstones of castles: all the spots that two beings who might not run into each other for a human lifetime might use as _postes restante_.

He’d opened every note like a gift, wondering how the angel would greet him this time: _‘Salve’_ , ‘Greetings’, ‘Well really!’, or recently and best of all, ‘My dear fellow’.

It would be both rude and underhand for Crowley to read Aziraphale's current notes without permission. This was fine from a demonic perspective, but the breach of trust bothered Crowley more than it should. He gave in anyway, and began to flip through Aziraphale’s writings, which were titled ‘The Merits of Not Having a Plan’, and took a famous human quotation for each chapter-heading. The current one read:

**1/ The unexamined life is not worth living?**

Crowley recalled that the man who’d originally said that preferred a cup of hemlock to a life he couldn’t live on his own terms. He’d never met Socrates, and now he wondered if Aziraphale had, and whether or not he thought his point valid. The question mark suggested disagreement, but the angel’s own notes were less loaded with judgment than Crowley had anticipated. On impulse, he lightly crossed out the last four words of the title, and added _…annoys the Hell out of point-scorers,_ in his fast undisciplined hand.

There. Now the angel would know for certain that his notes had been read, rather than just having his suspicions. On to the next bit:

**2/ Use every man after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping?**

Bloody Hamlet again. In the margins of _that_ chapter, Crowley jotted the names of five infamous flagellants, and half-a-dozen people Aziraphale wouldn’t’ve imagined to be into that sort of thing at all.

The demon sat in near-total darkness, silently reading. When he’d got to the end of Aziraphale’s current speculations, he took up the his Adversary’s pen, and began to write on a fresh page.

‘ _Once upon a time, there was an angel who got into so much trouble, he woke up as a different person._

_He wasn’t a mighty angel, by comparison to some, but he could coax stars into shape from the aether, so he wasn’t insignificant. The thing you first noticed about him was his quickness. He understood things fast, though not always deeply; he made lots of plans, and sometimes they worked. This sometimes gave him the impression that he was the cleverest thing ever, next to God, of course. Not that he properly believed that, but in secret, he liked the idea of it._

_All quick-witted children are insufferable — and he wasn’t the exception.’_

However Crowley tried to phrase it, the thing sounded as pat as a nursery tale, and at last he broke off with a scowl, tore out the still-wet page, and shoved it in his coat-pocket. The angel would surely notice the missing page, just as he would notice the marginal notes, but Crowley did not ask himself why he hadn’t just healed the notebook of his vandalism.

The angel wasn’t the only one who sorely needed a bit of shut-eye.

Crowley was well-accustomed to sleeping without a bed. You just needed the right shape, not to mention a degree of bendability. He spent a few minutes banking up the fire in the conventional way, and then gently miracling it not to go out before dawn. Then he pulled up the grubby hearthrug, pummeled the dust and soot from it like a human would, and rolled it into a long, hollow parcel, probably not like a human would, unless they happened to own a pet python.

—⁂—

The next morning dawned with the clarity that follows a storm. It was as if the weather had got something out of its system.

Aziraphale was accustomed to greet each day by mentally reciting a verse or two. But this particular morning, instead of launching into The Canticle of the Sun, he woke up. It wasn’t the first time he’d nodded off in recent weeks in his quest to come up with a definitive Treatise on Despond. But he woke up feeling decidedly too comfortable, beneath a blanket that shouldn’t have been keeping him nearly as snug as it had. Aziraphale did not recall falling asleep — and moreover, he did not recall getting into bed to do it.

 _Well, really,_ he thought peevishly. _I’m the ministering spirit, Crowley, whereas you are the hard-hearted fiend._ He sat up, and the minor miracle that had been keeping him warm self-destructed. One point to the hard-hearted fiend.

The bed had been rather optimistically described as ‘well-aired’, and Aziraphale was grateful that if there _did_ happen to be any bedbugs in residence, there wasn’t a drop of human blood in his veins. Though not grubby by the standards of the day, the sheets smelled of people with too little time and soap at their disposal before they’d had to catch their next coach. Over the years, the angel had adjusted his corporation to absorb all the things he liked about Earthly life, whilst exposing him to almost none of the annoyances, such as toothache and existential crises (although even Aziraphale did not manage to elude His Majesty’s Revenue). He was startled to find himself somewhat resenting a more in-depth exploration of the human predicament. It was one thing to know that God loved the meek, and quite another to wake up in their hired linen.

 _Am I, just conceivably, a snob?_ he pondered. _I do hope not. Better to be absurd than superior. But God knows what it’s actually like to be human; angels have to guess._

Aziraphale got up, fully dressed but barefoot, and began to search the room — firstly for his shoes, and secondly for Crowley, of whom there was no immediate sign. He briefly feared the demon might have slunk off in the night, but this proved groundless: his shoes had been set neatly before the grate, and less conventionally, something alive had installed itself inside the hearthrug, then curled up in front of the embers, which still exuded a trickle of warmth. The parcel was too narrow and regular in cross-section to contain a human body, and its occupant was breathing with a rhythmical sibilance, like a pair of leaky bellows.

It would have been trivial for Crowley to create a place to sleep that was comfier than this, or at any rate less threadbare. But clearly, Crowley was going to blessed if he was going to allow himself any creature comforts while Aziraphale drove himself night and day to placate Gabriel. Aziraphale also recalled that in times of stress, a snake’s instinct was to stow itself in the snuggest possible nook.

Since Crowley miracled them into being at need, the demon’s own clothes were nowhere in evidence, but on the mantelpiece, just next to the candlestick, was a pocket watch in the form of a little gold skull. Aziraphale had assumed that nothing Crowley carried on his person was a real object — partly for practical reasons, since you couldn’t exactly take a coat and boots with you if you nipped into singularity form. But he’d been mistaken. The demon had chosen this product of human ingenuity to make his own, and to sometimes carry about with him.

The skull-watch was luxuriously morbid in a way that there would be a word for, perhaps, in another six or seven generations. As Aziraphale peered at it, the head of a tiny enamel snake popped up jauntily in one eyesocket, then disappeared again. The angel let out a cry of surprise.

“’Sss’called an automaton,” boasted Crowley’s voice from floor-level. “Doesss that e’vry half-hour. Cosst me a fortune.”

The dark, neat head of a far larger snake popped out from one end of the rolled-up hearthrug, and fixed Aziraphale with a beady stare, just as he’d once done on the walls of Eden.

“It seems a bit much, _”_ observed Aziraphale. “I thought you had better taste.”

“Well, for onccce in your life, you’re wrong.”

In snake form, Crowley was a column of dark-scaled muscle fifteen feet long, as thick as a man’s calf at his broadest, with a patina like bronze. He slithered forth to wind around the broken-down chair, rearing up until his snout was at the level of Aziraphale’s nose, his yellow eyes aglow. In spite of himself, the angel blinked.

In the early days of the Arrangement, when they’d argued more ferociously, Crowley had sometimes used his alternate form as an unfair advantage, forcing the angel to argue with a being that had no facial expressions. But after nearly eight hundred years, Aziraphale was familiar with this ploy. Nowadays his fear was that the old serpent did it because he suspected his Adversary was tempted to run a hand down his polished sides — as if Crowley were the banister rail of a staircase, and giving in to this urge would not the most mortifying thing in the whole of their long history. Even the thought of it was appalling, and what was worse, Crowley sometimes seemed to invite it, inclining his head to be scratched behind wherever snakes kept their ears. Assuming that snakes _had_ ears.

Aziraphale had a sudden vision of laying his palm on those scales, and of Crowley pouring into human form until the two of them stood eye to eye, an angel’s hand upon a demon’s shoulder.

 _God help me,_ thought Aziraphale, clasping his hands behind his back. _What will come of this alliance? Whatever possessed me to throw in my lot with this…this_ personage _?”_

The snake’s pupils narrowed to slits, and his long tongue flickered. Amusement, perhaps, or just irritation? It was never easy to tell.

“If we’re going to use human transssport, I sshould have more in the way of legss, angel, and not ssso much in the way of scalesss. Grant a fiend sssome privacy?”

Aziraphale turned away with a jolt of relief, and busied himself with gathering up his field notes. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Crowley’s coils settle on the seat of the chair, lose their coherence, then flow quick as thought into the shape of a seated man, as if a Crowley-shaped bottle was filling itself with ink. At last the demon raised his head, stretched his limbs, and cracked his knuckles ostentatiously, as if there was something to be said for having hands after all. Only his eyes were the same Vesuvian yellow. Aziraphale stole a quick glimpse of them before Crowley snapped his fingers, and hid them once more behind his everlasting spectacles.

Crowley picked up the skull watch by its chain.

“These were all the rage after the Great Plague, angel. Understandable, really. I can’t recall who thought death by armpit boils would be a fine idea.”

“It’s possibly the most vulgar thing I’ve seen that’s made from gold,” observed Aziraphale. He knew such trinkets were generally inscribed _Memento Mori_ , somewhere or other — but in Crowley’s case, that would hardly be appropriate. “I won’t even ask what it’s worth.”

“Silver tarnishes on me,” said Crowley, a little defensively, “and I’m vulgar and proud of it.” He attached the chain to the edge of an inner pocket, and tucked his watch out of sight.

“Yet that thing is intended to be humorous, isn’t it? A costly little joke about death. I don’t properly understand it, but I get the distinct feeling that _you_ do. Would you care to enlighten me?”

A short sharp grin informed him that Crowley would not, and that the demon was, in fact, getting infernal pleasure from his bewilderment.

 _Confound you!_ thought Aziraphale, and then hastily _— not really!_

From the courtyard below, there came the clatter of horse-shoes on cobbles, and the jangle of stagecoach horns. Time to be moving on.

—⁂—

All through that morning’s journey, Aziraphale kept his nose buried in his papers, reading by the light of the small window in the side-door, which had been meticulously cleaned the previous evening, but was soon enough spattered with mud once more. Keeping anything spotless on this Earthly plane was a never-ending task.

It didn’t take the angel long to reach the sections that his Adversary had annotated. At first, he frowned at Crowley’s pithy line in marginalia, and then, in spite of himself, he smiled. Few of the demon’s observations could go into the fair copy he’d send to Gabriel when back in London, and many were frankly irreverent, but they had been written for a purpose, and that purpose was to amuse, surprise, and occasionally outrage the angel Aziraphale. It would make the slog of revision a lot less like hard work.

At every stop, some passengers got off the coach, and others got on. By the time the coach was closing in on Wakefield, the angel and the demon were alone.

It occurred to Aziraphale that since around the second century _anno domini_ , Crowley (who’d missed a trick by inventing sunglasses before he got around to patent law) had rarely let the angel look him in the eye, except through the inscrutable features of a snake. Aziraphale was unworldly, but not oblivious. The demon wanted to observe him, without being observed as closely in return. Aziraphale was, in some abstruse fashion, Crowley’s private project. But if the straightforward explanation was true, and the plan was to eventually present Hell with a fresh-Fallen Principality, the demon been taking his time about it — and for thousands of years, Aziraphale had been giving Crowley the benefit of doubt.

“Ha’penny for your thoughts?” said the demon suddenly, as they halted at a toll-gate.

The soul of Shakespeare could not have bought Aziraphale’s thoughts, had it offered a signed first edition of _Cardenio_ for them.

“Um.” Aziraphale flailed for some plausibly idiotic notion, got purchase on the ‘idiotic’ part, and failed on ‘plausible’. “I was wondering. Do snakes have ears?”

“What? I mean, pardon. No, we — I mean, they mostly hear through their jawbones. The myriad wonders of Creation.”

One of Crowley’s many talents was giving the impression that he might be laughing at you, while remaining po-faced. He was doing it now, leaning his elbow on the buttoned seating of the coach, chin propped on one swaying palm, regarding Aziraphale through his inscrutable lenses.

“You’re a terrible liar,” observed the demon. “What were you _really_ thinking about?”

 _He’s going to do it,_ thought Aziraphale, panicking quietly to himself. _He’s going to do it again._ The angel was fairly confident that the demon couldn’t read his thoughts — even if it were possible, one would surely sense the intrusion — but he had a nasty habit of working them out from first principles.

“If you won’t tell _me,_ then I’ll tell _you._ You were thinking ‘It’s all very well for that old shape-shifter. He’s a minion of Hell. If it all comes out about the Arrangement, he can say he was trying to corrupt me, and they might well believe him. Perhaps I’d even Fall, and he’d take the credit.’ And it’s true. I could say all that.”

“If it comes to it, dear fellow, you probably should. It wouldn’t make my predicament much worse.”

Crowley made a wry face.

“You need more sleep, angel, ‘cos you’re still not thinking straight. Need I remind you that we demons are selfish bastards? If I said all that, you’d be _replaced_ , Aziraphale — assuming I wasn’t recalled Below, and put in charge of a regiment of the infernally keen and stupid. So you’re very safe from me, d’you understand?”

“For selfish reasons?”

“For entirely selfish reasons,” replied the fiend, and relapsed into silence as the coach started on its way once more. At Wakefield they parted ways, Aziraphale in a lumbering conveyance bound for daffodil-spangled Grasmere, and Crowley in a mail-coach racing towards the Satanic mills of Manchester, weaving past chimneys that laced the air with soot. But even the Industrial Revolution couldn’t quite suppress a Spring that pushed leaves from blasted branches and grass-tufts from gutters, rebelliously green in spite of it all.

In another week, it would be Easter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In one of the scenes cut from the script for TVGO, but readable on [this imgur link](https://imgur.com/a/CeOm3Tt) for the overcommitted (like me), Aziraphale founds his bookshop in 1800, which is a plausible date. The literacy rate in the latter half of the C18 zoomed, driven by early industrial printing, but it’s tough to estimate literacy rates among people who could only afford the most disposable of reads. Ballads and chapbooks are nowadays rare and pricy, precisely because so few have survived, but the song in this chapter is a real one, cribbed from the excellent [Bodleian Ballads Online](http://ballads.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/search/roud/V21369).


	8. Lone and level sands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **CW:mention of suicide** for this chapter only.
> 
> Given the nature of the fic, I guess this isn’t a big spoiler. It takes place off-stage, and no named characters are involved. The scene can be skipped without losing much continuity by leaving off at the subheading ‘Psalm 107’, and resuming at ‘The Messenger’s messenger’.

**A quartet for wings**

_**Josiah Bamping** _

Josiah Bamping’s wings weren’t physically attached to him, but they followed him through the streets of London almost as faithfully as if they had been. Crowley’s raven confederate had located the boy without difficulty, then launched a charm offensive calculated to win both the confidence of a child, and the exasperated tolerance of his relatives.

The two Bamping girls had been easy targets. To the raven’s dismay, it wasn’t even necessary to commit theft, for Josiah’s sisters were human magpies, agog for all that glittered, and costume finery was the only sort of find their parents let them keep. Plenty of eyes scanned London’s streets for lost brummagem, but birds had a height advantage, so cut-steel buttons, stray lace-pins, and ribbons dropped from fancy bonnets all winged their way into Kitty and Tetty’s willing hands.

Then, it was the parents’ turn. Mr. Francis Bamping was heard to remark approvingly that although ravens weren’t too proud to eat such morsels as the cats’ meat man sold cheap, they also kept themselves scrupulously clean. Shortly afterwards, when Mrs. Eleonora Bamping dropped a bag of dried peas in the kitchen, the raven recovered every last one for her. Both of them wondered if ravens could be house-trained, and were never more surprised than when a croak answered in the affirmative — then asked if they had enemies whose hats needed special attention.

The Bampings and their daughters weren’t foolish. There was clearly something fey about a raven that paid its way and talked in full sentences, but there was also no denying the effect on Josiah, who’d learned that minor miracles weren’t confined to books; they could sometimes actually happen. At the end of a week, the consensus among the Bamping family was that the bird could stay.

Inspired by the raven in Little Goody Two-Shoes, Josiah named his new friend ‘Ralph’ by pointing to that name in the book. ‘Ralph’ was a female raven, but she wasn’t about to complain. Her demonic patron had undersold the potential of being the parter-in-crime of a nine-year-old who had long ago perfected the art of looking innocent, and whose fierce intelligence was only partially tamed by human language. Yes, she could come to an understanding with this one.

It was the Tuesday after Palm Sunday, and Josie was earning honest money running errands. More specifically, errands for Mr. Crowley, on whose behalf he had a parcel to deliver. Due to the fact that he had never been able to rely on asking for directions, boy’s mental map of the streets of London was a marvel, and he knew the way to a particular address like the back of his hand. When he reached the courtyard of Aziraphale’s bookshop, Josiah saw that Ralph was just ahead of him. She alighted on the bracket of the Sign of the Globe, making the painted world swing on its chain.

“Ark!”

—⁂—

_**Aziraphale** _

Aziraphale’s wings prickled, a familiar nuisance. Whenever his Earthly responsibilities felt vast, the invisible limbs at his shoulderblades would itch for the freedom of the skies, recalling a time when he his natural trade was combat, not sitting at a writing-desk. For the present, however, his weapon remained the pen. He’d been hard at work since returning to London, pausing only to file his newest report to Gabriel, and to notify Crowley (by way of Gunter’s Tea Shop) of a Despond Task in Battersea, which fell due around Easter Week.

No rest for the good. The angel refreshed his quill, and forged onwards —

 _For as Maimonides sayeth,_ he wrote, _if you know where someone’s lost property might be, it’s your duty to help them to find it. And what is Peace of Mind, if not the most personal of lost properties?_

_But the point is to help **them** to find it. After all, one’s own inkling about where to find it may be wrong. But — and I cannot stress how important this is — you can’t just miracle up some Peace of Mind for them. Inconvenient it may be, but each soul knows its own Peace of Mind, and the results of finding out they’ve been issued a substitute are…mixed._

_And what if they never do find it? I have no particularly insightful suggestions. Only that one must be patient, always._

Aziraphale was roused from his work by a rapping at the door of the bookshop, rather than the jingle of the bell. That could only mean two things. Firstly, he must have forgotten to open up, and secondly, his visitor had _completely ignored_ the polite list of instructions of how they should behave in such an eventuality. He miracled his lines dry, and sighed.

 _Who can tell an angel where to find their own peace of mind?_ he thought wryly. _I might need their advice._

But when he got to the door, Aziraphale’s demeanour changed. His caller, face distorted by the bullseye glass of the shop window, was just tall enough to peer through the second row of panes, and had a long, thin parcel tucked beneath one arm.

“Josiah Bamping!” exclaimed the angel, and opened up with a bow more appropriate to an ambassadorial visit.

Josie, who was familiar with Mr. Fell’s extravagances, bowed in return. Like his sisters and mother, he had a mop of dark curls, but in ten years he would have his father’s sharp features, and in twenty, the same high colouring. He indicated Aziraphale’s list of escape clauses against letting in customers, made a wince of apology, and proffered his parcel by way of explanation.

“Josiah,” said the angel, with a reproving expression, “those rules don’t apply to friends,” he shook his head once, and laid a hand over his heart, “and they don’t apply to deliveries,” he shook his head again, and indicated the parcel. Then he beamed, as only an angel can. “Come in.”

As Josie crossed the threshold, something swooped over his shoulder, perched atop one of Aziraphale’s bookcases, and gave the place a once-over for portable swag.

“Oh! A pet!” exclaimed Aziraphale, astonished. “What’s his name?”

“Ralph’s ’er name,” croaked the raven, “an’ ‘er name is Ralph, an’ she ain’t nobody’s by-our-lady _bet.”_

Aziraphale took a step back. “Goodness, what a talented creature.” _Crowley,_ thought the angel privately. Crowley was behind this, without a doubt.

“Goodness ‘ad nuffin to do wivvit,” observed the raven, confirming his suspicions, then nipped from the bookcase to the writing-desk, where she appraised the quills for residual blessings. Ah. Bribery. So _that_ was how it was going to be.

“She may have _one_ feather,” said Aziraphale, holding up a finger to Josie. “You may have _one_ book,” he added, indicating the shelf of Improving Literature for the Moral Benefit of Young Persons with the same finger.

The boy gave Ralph a stern look, and tapped her once on the head, and silently mouthed, _one._

Aziraphale knew that despite his father’s justifiable pride, Josiah didn’t really write like a little clerk. He wrote with astonishing neatness, and had worked out that a lot of words were the same idea in different clothes. In consequence, his written vocabulary was a compact marvel. But he’d achieved all this by a talent for systematics, and his grammar was its own creature, and always would be.

That he could read at all, let alone write, was a human miracle, not an angelic one. Three years earlier, Aziraphale had been forced to admit that his well-meaning project to teach Josiah to communicate had withered on the vine: the gap between silence and language could not be bridged by print. The bridge-building had been done by Josiah’s sisters, who’d tirelessly play-acted for their deaf brother, and built up an expressive language that had only three adepts in all the world.

No wonder Josie had taken it hard when his sisters began to grow up — and at that point, the written word had started to be of real use to him. As he grew older, it would have to serve him more and more, and it took only the smallest of miracles to direct the searching boy towards Mrs. Anna Barbauld’s excellent reading primers, in their covers of sunny yellow.

The boy’s perusals were interrupted by a triumphant caw from Ralph, who’d tipped over the pen-pot, scattered the quills left, right, and centre, and chosen one that was particularly white and soft. Grasping it in her bill, she fluttered onto Josie’s outstretched arm. It was, of course, the very feather that Crowley had found outside Montagu House, and the only one in Aziraphale’s collection that didn’t come from his own wings. But it was too late to correct the error — Ralph had chosen it, and she was not a raven for turning.

Aziraphale bore this mishap with fortitude. “What a clever bird,” he said to Josie, tapping his own forehead and nodding in a way indicative of wisdom, then pointing to the agent of black-feathered mischief.

“Not ezzackly the only clever bird in ‘ere, am I?” she replied, knowingly. “Rarrrk!”

Their business concluded, the bird and her boy returned to London’s streets, but not before Josiah cadged a sixpence tip from Aziraphale, in addition to Mrs. Barbauld’s offerings, and in spite of Aziraphale’s strong suspicion that Crowley had already paid him. The angel locked the doors firmly against further visitors, miracled his quills back into his pen-pot, and turned to unwrapping Crowley’s gift.

The first thing he pulled from the parcel was a note, urging Azirpahale to visit Montagu House to — as the demon put it — ‘knock heads together’ on their upcoming Despond task. The note seemed to be written in untidy haste, even for Crowley, but the oddest thing about it was that it ended: PS. THIS IS FOR YOUR STRAGGLERS.

Which led to the present itself. On the rare occasions Crowley had sent Aziraphale a gift in the past, that gift had invariably been a book. This offering proved to be cane three feet long, surmounted by a small, perfectly-carved hand made from boxwood. Given the current fashion for wearing one’s own hair, its human purpose was almost obsolete, but Crowley had not sent it for a human purpose.

A wig-scratcher. How mortifying. His Adversary had sent him a wig-scratcher, and made the reason all too clear.

Without Aziraphale’s conscious bidding, there was a soft _whump!_ , like someone shaking out a featherbed. The back room of the Globe bookshop, though somewhat larger on the inside than it had any right to be, was only just wide enough for a Principality’s wingspan, but it would have to do. In a series of flutterings and scratchings, and the occasional appreciative ‘Ah!’, the wig-scratcher was put to unorthodox use. At least the process would supply fresh writing material.

—⁂—

_**Vereviel** _

Vereviel’s wings were recently preened, and they wafted her once more through the Firmament of Records. She carried a scroll of Tasks in one hand, and as was not unusual for Vereviel, she looked concerned. She grew even more worried as she approached the place where she had to ascend steeply, in order to converse with her Recording Angel — then found herself buffeted by a jubilation of colours, textures, key changes, and magnetic surges never experienced by another thinking being, before or since.

Her Friend was praising God, as only a Recording Angel can.

A human critic who, despite all his learning, could neither paint or sing, once acidly observed that _‘it is not easy to paint in song, or to sing in colours’_. It is not easy, but with thousands of years of practice, it can be done. As Vereviel approached her Friend, she found herself swept up in such a vivid torrent of praise that it became hard to think a thought as simple as —

_> What in Heaven’s name are you doing? <_

Vereviel realised she was trying to fly upside-down, and righted herself with as much dignity as she could muster. Never before had she addressed her Friend so rudely.

_**> Before your ever-welcome arrival, I was meditating on the seventy-second Word of the eight hundred and twelfth Line of my Name — <** _

**_> — Verse three thousand and sixty, Chapter five million — <_ **

**_> — Book three hundred and fifty-eight. <_ **

Vereviel’s mood revealed itself in her exaggerated wingbeats, but due to the fact that they were fringed, it did so in silence.

_> Sometimes I get the impression that you find me amusing. <_

_**> Let us hope God finds all Her creatures amusing — for otherwise, Her boredom must be immense. But you seem troubled, Vereviel. Whatever have you got there? <** _

Vereviel’s reply was mournful, redolent of crushed weeds and the wind keening about deserted islands.

_> The Archangel Gabriel calls it a portfolio. A portfolio of living souls! I was never created as any sort of Soul Guardian, and I am supposed to somehow look after three of them! <_

For decades, Heaven had hummed with rumours of such a development, and now, it had actually happened. It was impossible to contest the logic of expanding the Guardian Angel system to cope with unprecedented demand, but there were many, many angels who, like Vereviel, suddenly found themselves grappling with the human condition in ways they had never anticipated.

_**> How interesting. I don’t suppose, by some Ineffable chance, that the last name on that list would be Josiah Bamping? <** _

_> You knew! And I’m sure it wasn’t there last week. Is this your doing?<_

_**> I did not know. I merely…extrapolated, from the fall of a single feather. It’s always nice when extrapolations are congruent with the observed outcome — <** _

_> For once, will you stop being superior! <_

_**> I cannot <** _

_> !!! <_

Vereviel reeled in the air. She should not feel indignant, but…she was. She reflected that since indignation was an emotion found in humans, she should probably be grateful for the experience.

_**> Dear Angel of Vows, my wisdom is not deep, merely very broad — <** _

**_> — but I do know that I cannot stop being your superior, any more than you can stop being mine. <_ **

_> Do you truly believe that? <_

She was answered a chord of warm reassurance, as plain as the praise of God had been baroque.Only her long acquaintance with her Friend permitted her to tell that it was tinged, just faintly, with regret.

_**> Vereviel, I have spent every moment of my own existence Recording human existence — <** _

**_> — yet, since I could too easily damage them, I have never breathed upon a single life on Earth, nor ever will.<_ **

_> But you would like to go there? <_

The answer swept her a dizzying height up into the Firmament of Records, so high that even a winged creature could tremble at the space beneath it, and gave her her answer: there are places where only fragile things can pass, not mighty angels who are junctions of light, shields of bliss, tempests of sensation, and solitary mirrors.

_**> No, Vereviel. I would like you to go. <** _

—⁂—

_**Gabriel** _

Gabriel’s wings powered through skies so brilliant that he cast no shadow upon the dunes beneath. No sun shone above him, only endless light, more fearsome in its way than the depths of Hell. In darkness, it is at least possible to hide.

 _Quam terribilis est locus iste, non est hic aliud nisi domus Dei,_ recited the Archangel, but only within his own mind. _Terrible is this place indeed; it is none other than the House of God._

As he’d pointed out to Aziraphale, there was nothing wrong with his Latin, and recitations were the only way he’d devised of keeping track of his progress here, where there was neither life nor death,

When God made the Archangels, She lavished them with gifts. Michael was strong and fair. Sandalphon was loyal and brave. Uriel had been gifted with both wisdom and empathy, and to balance Gabriel’s speed, the Almighty decreed that he should also be meticulous. But one consequence of the Fall that tore out half of Heaven was that although the surviving Archangels kept their gifts, they found them hardened. High-minded Michael learned to scheme, Uriel’s empathy armoured itself in guile, Sandalphon’s loyalty became a scarred fist — and Gabriel, built to notice perfection, had learned to notice flaws.

The dunes the Archangel sped over were not made of sand. They were made of Time. Each grain was a moment of blank possibility, and the glare the reflected from the not-sky above them was punishing, even to Gabriel. Nevertheless, he would sometimes come alone to these deserts of vast eternity, because it was the one place he would never find an error.

The truly Ineffable thing was that before the Fall, before there were any serious mistakes to tackle, there _had_ been angels capable of tackling serious mistakes. They had been inquisitive types, those angels, full of movement and colour, beings whose motto was _In the Beginning, there was The Conversation_ — but they were all gone. Heaven was still home to music-makers, but there were no more dreamers of variegated dreams. Every one of those prismatic beings had Fallen, and the only cure for the demons they had become was destruction.

Gabriel bore this knowledge as a High Chamberlain would bear a piece of gravel in his shoe. A human courtier of the highest rank is all discipline. He stays as charismatic as ever, though he has been on his feet for longer than he can recall, fortifying himself with the hope that _this_ may be the evening when his liege gives him proper instructions. Crowds part respectfully before the man closest to the unseen Eminence; eyes study his face for clues to the ruler’s will. He walks the corridors of power with footsteps as steady as a metronome, and there is no stone in his shoe, for he cannot be seen to limp.

When such moods took him, which was not often, the Archangel would fly above the endless dunes until his recitations and a heaviness in his wings told him that if he did not double back, he might have to alight. Even Gabriel did not know what would happen if he landed on the Sands of Time, and he intended to never find out.

He had flown an incalculable distance, until his keen eyes could see what appeared to be a solitary black dot, very far below him, and now he halted in the air. Since there were no shadows out here, the shuffling of the sands around this dot could barely be seen, but Gabriel nonetheless knew that they were moving. This was the place where Sands of Time funneled downwards, grain by inexorable grain. Far below the surface, there was an opening as narrow as a single moment, and its name was the Present.

Gabriel paused over the terrible place, as alone as any being in Creation, and prayed in silence to God.

_< Tell me my duty, and I will do it. >_

There was no answer, which did not surprise Gabriel. He had done this many times before, and in another part of his awareness, he continued to recite Scripture so that his journey would not outlast his endurance, which was supreme, but not infinite. The Sands of Time were not meant to be seen in their entirety, and too long in this merciless light could peel even an Archangel to their core. Gabriel wheeled around and flew back to Heaven, where time passed and duties awaited him, the straightest arrow in God’s quiver.

* * *

**Good Wednesday**

“How are the wings?” asked Crowley, from his throne in the basement of the British Museum. “No stragglers?”

The decadence of his chair emphasised the fact that the demon was very sober, and clad in plain charcoal grey. The upcoming Task required the Invisible Presence of the intervening angel — or, in this case, the intervening demon — and Crowley had left off all his extravagant accessories, in order to more swiftly make the metaphysical transition to a still, small voice of calm.

“No stragglers,” replied Aziraphale, from his perch on a crate of brand-new Egyptian mummies. Fearing this sounded ungrateful, he added, “It was a nic— I mean, it was a very practical thought.”

That day, a sea-mist had crawled up the Thames and into the streets of London, making Aziraphale’s afternoon trip to Montagu House a chill and clammy affair. He’d accepted the offer of a glass of port, then been disconcerted to see his host not pour one for himself. It had been a long time since Aziraphale had seen Crowley’s ascetic side, and he was reminded uncomfortably of the first Easter of them all, when Crowley had emerged from the wastelands beyond Jerusalem like a mirage, hair uncombed and swathed in black, an unholy hermit with a pack of unanswerable questions.

“Dear fellow, you seem out of sorts. What is it about this Task that needs such urgent discourse?”

Crowley’s sharp nails tapped the arms of his throne. “Apart from the fact that Heaven, in its Ineffable wisdom, scheduled a Despond task for Holy Wednesday, which isn’t the luckiest day of the blasted year? I know man already.” After a long pause, he added, ”Well, I know _of_ him — and what I know isn’t good.”

“You’re worried he might recognise you? I wondered if this would happen, sooner or later.”

“He doesn’t know me,” said the demon, “but he earned me a Dishonourable Mention, when I was in France in the nineties, and he was in finance, trying to keep the wheels from coming off the Revolutionary economy. I’m surprised the man’s still alive.”

The angel sipped his port. “He’s hardly in the sere and yellow leaf.”

“He’s not the careful sort, either. After King Louis lost his head and the Jacobins were fully in charge, our new friend got put on my Temptations list. I was just doing my homework on him when he beat me to it by being unmasked as a counterfeiter — and we’re talking cartloads of notes, not a few duds passed at the local market. It might’ve been less awkward if he hadn’t been a government official.”

“Good Lord. How did he escape the guillotine?”

“With the aid of a demonic miracle. T’was least I could do for him. He fled to England, his Revolutionary colleagues cursed him for a traitor in the pay of Albion, and of course, I told Downstairs the whole thing was down to me. Six months later, I got my Dishonourable Mention, and note a from Dagon asking if I’d decided to try sub-contracting for Souls. Our friend’s name had come up so often in the Files Department they thought he must be my contractual agent.”

“I take it that he hasn’t _actually_ signed an Infernal contract?”

“If any of my rivals had signed him, they’d say so. No, this one’s a free lancer. I was hoping _you_ might know what on Earth Heaven might want with a man like him.”

Aziraphale swung his port around its glass. “Apparently, he dug his way out of penury, but it seems that his past haunts him. If he should turn to philanthropy and the Church in his middle years, in a way that makes a change of heart undeniable, it would be quite the feather in Heaven’s cap. A soul snatched back from the very brink of Hell — ”

“— for Holy purpose of publicity. Sounds to me as if Upstairs deserves him. And how, exactly, were his fortunes restored?”

“I’ve heard that it was at the gaming-table,” said the angel, a little uncomfortably. Sometimes Heaven’s selection of an especially heavy-duty sinner for a last-minute salvage attempt _was_ a little tricky to justify. “Look here, Crowley, if you don’t fancy this particular Task, I’ll gladly do it myself.”

“No. We need all the information we can get. But I warn you, I’ve got an ugly feeling about this one.”

“Not an actual premonition? Surely, that’s all the more reason the Task should should fall to me?”

“ _No,”_ said Crowley, and set his jaw.

—⁂—

**Psalm 107**

The Task turned out as badly as it could.

Aziraphale, waiting anxiously in the mist outside a gate in Battersea behind which nothing was visible but the light from a single window, intuited that Crowley had failed, two seconds before he heard the shot. Those two seconds passed like an eternity, and the angel, full of foreboding, filled them with quiet prayers —

_They go down again to the depths: their soul is dissolved in trouble._

_They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wit's end._

_Then they cry unto God in their woe, and She bringeth them out of their distresses._

_She maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still._

Aziraphale stood praying in the insinuating, miserable mist until Crowley returned to him, back in human form, but expressionless and with his back very straight. By unspoken agreement, they agreed to suffer the clammy chill together, like humans would. They’d agreed to the same parsimony regarding miracles when spending the night in the coaching-inn in Retford, but that trip had been an exercise in the picaresque. This was the opposite, and they walked side-by-side for ten minutes under dripping plane trees, the river fog muffling their steps, before Crowley spoke at all.

“Well, that’s something for your list of heroic failures,” he said, still looking straight ahead.

“It can’t be the first time this has happened to either of us. We’ve both seen more human lives come to an end than either of us can count. One simply gets on with one’s job.”

“You’re pleased to be generous,” said the demon shortly. “How very angelic of you.”

“Crowley, I won’t rise to this, and I’m not a total fool. You warned me this might go awry — but it clearly turned out even worse than you anticipated. So, out with it.”

They trudged onwards for another silent half-minute, and then Crowley said —

“He told me — he told me that he deserved to go to Hell. That he was glad of it, and he chose it. Blasphemy against the Spirit, angel.”

“Oh. Oh, _Crowley_. No.”

The road passed through a part of Battersea that was full of market gardens, with high walls on both sides to deter thieves. Here, the pent-up mist surrounded them so completely that anything more than ten feet away was invisible. It was as if they inhabited a small and pitiful universe, built for just the two of them, and the demon upped his pace.

“You win some, angel, and you lose some. Either way, really _._ He gets his wish, and maybe I’ll get a Commendation.”

“No.” Aziraphale shook his head, surprising himself with his own vehemence.“They can’t actually _want_ that. It may be theoretically possible, but…”

“Unforgivable sin. Right there in your Gospels.”

“Humans wrote those, and we both know it. Show me where She ever, _ever_ said that. God knows you can’t.”

Then Crowley stopped in his tracks, and cursed the Almighty with such level violence that the angel shrank from him, appalled. He cursed Her in the name of War, Plague, and Famine, he cursed Her in the name of the many forms of Death he knew. He cursed Her, and all Her works. Aziraphale had almost forgotten Crowley capable of this. The demon’s habitual elegance had peeled away from him, leaving a mutinous apparition, and for the first time in centuries, the angel saw his Adversary as Fallen.

 _Heaven help him, he doesn’t know what he’s doing,_ thought Aziraphale, before he recalled that the first part of that was impossible, and the second was untrue. Crowley knew exactly what he was doing.

“You’re quite certain about all that?” asked the demon, when he had recovered himself, they were slogging onward through the fog, and Aziraphale had yet to utter a word of reply. “What about your Ineffable Free Will? The chance to be definitively wicked?

“Not like that! They can’t use suicide as a shortcut to damnation,” replied the angel stubbornly, “and I don’t care what the books say.”

“That’s a first. And your high-ups seem to be fine with people believing the opposite.”

Aziraphale recalled a time in Eden when it had felt natural to take Crowley under his wing. Somewhere in the Aether, his wings shifted with the desire to do so again.

“We’d stand a better chance of discussing this properly if we dried ourselves out. I know a place that will still be open. No miracles, I promise — but we could get properly drunk and suffer the consequences. If you want.”

“Forgive me if I don’t feel like toasting my success.”

“Perhaps you might commiserate your Adversary’s failure.”

“I’d rather not,” said Crowley, as humourless as Aziraphale had heard him since the last great plague. In the mist, the demon’s smoked glasses gave the ugly impression of sockets, and he looked every inch the sort of thing no-one wants to meet down a dark alley. Aziraphale wished that he _could_ be afraid, but instead, he knew Crowley must think the sight merely disgusted him. It took a vast effort for the angel to crush down any pity he might feel for a being who should have brought wonder everywhere he went, and instead had to be _this._

 _You look like Death,_ thought the angel. _I was wrong to lay this sort of duty on you. How many times have you done it, win or lose, and never told me?_

“Getting drunk doesn’t help in this situation, angel, as you must know. I’m going home, and tomorrow, I’m going to tempt people to do things that are actually fun. I expect to be at it for at least a week, and then I have business overseas.” He didn’t specify what business, and Aziraphale didn’t ask.

_I revise my opinion, Crowley. I was not wrong to lay this Task on you. Had I kept if secret, you wouldn’t have thanked me. But I was wrong — cruelly, unthinkingly wrong — to insist that I observe how you did. If you didn’t know for a fact you would fail — no, that **either** of us would fail — then you had every reason to suppose it. It was I who insisted on being the spectator._

“Best be off, then,” said the demon, his voice still harsh, but no longer furious. “I’ve got a blasted boat to catch, then weeks of hubris work in the Low Countries. If you get any more Tasks in the meantime, make a list of likely ones, and leave them in Handel’s oboe in Vauxhall Gardens.”

“May I take from that,” asked the Guardian of the Eastern Gate, “that you really intend to try this sort of experiment again?”

“What elssse is there to do?” asked the Tempter of Eve, with a fair attempt at a shrug. “Good-night, angel.”

Aziraphale held out his hand, but only the fog grasped it.

* * *

**The Messenger’s messenger**

Aziraphale didn’t hear from Crowley for nearly six weeks. Apart from attending a lonely funeral at Bunhill Fields, he spent the first three of those weeks in an iron routine of thinking and writing. Papers piled up around him. He rose from his desk only to file reports among the pages of Emmanuel Swedenborg’s _De Caelo et Eius Mirabilibus,_ from whence they vanished, replaced by Gabriel’s terse replies, which sometimes ran simply ‘DEO.SOLI.GLORIA’. Whilst Aziraphale was duty-bound to agree with this motto, in his private opinion some encouragement wouldn’t have gone amiss.

He’d feared that Gabriel would personally notice the tragic outcome of the job in Battersea, but the fact of the matter was that the Archangel took little interest in case studies; what he wanted was broad-brush rules that could be implemented Heaven-wide.

At the start of the fourth week, the angel’s elbow nudged the teetering papers off his desk. He _just_ avoided saying a rude word with an experience born of practice, but after he’d miracled the pile back into order, his old notes on Maimonides’ _Regimen of Health_ reproached him from the top of it:

_* Engage in regular gymnastics (✗)_

_* Remember to eat supper. (✓✓)_

_* Choose fruit for dessert. (✗…✓…?)_

_* Drink sweet beverages (✓)_

_* Ride frequently on horseback (✗✗✗)_

_* On awakening (✗✗), read an improving book. (✓✓✓)_

Was Aziraphale following this wisdom himself? He was not. In theory, there could be no such thing as a depressed angel; all angels were suspended in the preserving love of God, like eggs in isinglass. In practice, this particular angel was forced to admit that he was mopish.

With a snap of his fingers, Aziraphale flung open every window in his shop _(gymnastics)_ and a Spring breeze barged in, bearing the scents of muck and renewal. Later, he sallied forth to Gunter’s in search not of tea, but the more formidable comforts of cocoa and quince jam _(sweet beverages, fruit for dessert)._ Instead of horseback riding, he added an additional Task to his list: _minimum four Good Deeds per week, to keep the spirits buoyant._ Since every book in his shop was in some way improving, he indulged in bibliomancy one more time, wandering his hand along the shelves until he pulled out a book, and read: ‘ _Without hope, it is impossible to find the unhoped-for, since there is no trail leading to it and no path.’_

 _Good old Heraclitus,_ thought the angel, before subjecting the rest of his shelves to a fierce pillaging, using each book as a stepping-stone into the mysteries of the human mind. Some of these books were in Arabic or Persian, survivors of the House of Knowledge in Cairo and the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, both libraries vanished from the face of the Earth. When he’d gone through these treasures, Aziraphale started on Pantaenus, Mesuë the Elder, and Julian of Norwich, sustaining himself on Bath biscuits and jam.

After a week’s more study, he had a visitor. Not Crowley (more was the pity), nor Josie Bamping (something of a relief), nor (God forbid) the Archangel Gabriel, but another Heavenly visitant entirely. There were no gongs and surges of power this time, neither was there the tinkling of a bell. Instead, there was a drop in air pressure, quite impossible to ignore, though Aziraphale tried his best for several minutes. At last he padded down from his study to see what manner of angel had managed to miracle back the rag-rug covering his Summoning Sigil from as far away as Heaven, and drop in for a visit.

She wore violet from head to foot, and her severe profile was distantly familiar to him.

 _Vereviel,_ he recalled, with the clarity of someone for whom a thousand years is not very long ago. She’d never spoken to him (to the best of Aziraphale’s knowledge, Vereviel had never spoken to anyone), and he had only ever seen her react to one phrase: _The Promise Shall Be Kept_. Vereviel was one of Gabriel’s people, and she had different duties to Aziraphale, but in terms of rank they were on roughly the same level.

“Vereviel, Angel of Vows and Silences, greeting. How lovely to see you again,” said Aziraphale, with genuine warmth. “It’s been — what — three thousand years? The destruction of Mycenae? Unfortunate business, that. Especially as they’d just invented the bathtub.”

His colleague inclined her head a fraction, enough to suggest that she considered their introductions concluded. Did she actually notice any statements other than vows? Aziraphale had never been certain on that point. Some of the most powerful angels in Heaven were like a sort of complicated clockwork, one that rendered the question of ‘personality’ a bit moot. On the rare occasions that their paths had crossed, Vereviel’s lightest mood had appeared to be ‘extremely dedicated’.

Vereviel was not a mighty enough angel to just pop down to on Earth whenever the spirit moved her. She must have good reason for coming to the bookshop, and some higher-ranking servant of the Lord must have given her permission. Aziraphale considered that on balance, it was probably Gabriel who’d sent her, as a hint that he should bring his researches to a conclusion.

“Please inform your patron that I work all the hours God sends,” he said. His Enochian could do with a polish. “And that the promise shall be kept.”

She nodded, but did not leave.

“Oh, bother. Well, if you haven’t come to speed my studies or return _De Caelo_ , what _have_ you come for?” Aziraphale paced around his Summoning Sigil in bafflement, until he caught sight of an object that (along with a feather recently purloined by Ralph) furnished a possible solution. It was Crowley’s wig-scratcher, propped against some bookshelves.

“Vereviel, unless I’m mistaken, you dropped something outside Montagu House while you were doing observation work.”

Literate as he was, Aziraphale couldn’t use the language of the Firmament of Records, and making his point to Vereviel required a minor sacrifice of dignity. Wig-scratcher in hand, he made discreet preening motions behind his own shoulders. Vereviel at first looked puzzled, and then mortified, in a way that suddenly changed her from a human-shaped Divine Power into an actual person. The margins of the Summoning Circle blushed an embarrassed lilac, and she held out a tentative hand, as if to receive her lost feather back again.

“Um. Well. Yes. I’m afraid I haven’t got it. I _was_ going to say it was stolen — but in truth, I suspect it might have been rightfully claimed.”

Aziraphale’s visitant glanced at the bookshelves, and in particular, the one where the books had narrow, colourful bindings and were just the right distance from the floor. Records of some sort, clearly. Records made for a particular sort of human reader, but one who must be on the small side. She puzzled over the matter for a few moments, and then, something very close to a smile crossed her face.

Vereviel vanished without as little sound and commotion as she flew, and around the rim of the circle, her lilac light slowly faded.

 _There is no trail leading to the unhoped-for,_ thought Aziraphale, his spirits lifting properly for the first time in weeks, _but sometimes the unhoped-for finds you._

—⁂—

It was the last Spring of the 18th Century, and skies of forget-me-not satin were a thing of London’s past.

The city weather darted about like a girl who’d saved up for one dress, and found her chosen colour too costly, settling at last on a chimney-smoke blue. In the streets below, the hawkers had turned to flogging buttonhole posies, vials of scent, and the latest craze in self-improvement, tiny brushes for one’s teeth — for in a few weeks’ time, it would Greenwich Fair, and there was no use attending _that_ with breath that could fell an elephant. Greenwich Fair was a three-days’ madness of trinket-stalls and raree-shows, enlivened by ginger-beer, gin-and-water, and the cheap but risky pastime of racing down Observatory Hill until one fell over and rolled to the bottom.

It wasn’t quite Aziraphale’s style, but as the days of alarming festivity approached, was notified of another Despond task — and Greenwich Fair was the spot assigned for it. He mulled over not telling Crowley about it at all, but at last put misgivings aside, and trotted off to Vauxhall Gardens (this time, without the complication of the Bamping sisters) to leave a message for the demon at the statue of Handel. Returning a week later, he found an answer awaiting him:

_Of course I’ll do it. But only if you chuck out that that old blue justacorps with cuffs you could smuggle mice in._

The ‘old blue justacorps’ was the angel’s beloved, antiquated Summer coat, understudy to the one that had served and fallen in the French Revolution. Personally, Aziraphale thought turned-back sleeves were still dashing, if no longer as smart as they’d been in the 1680’s, but he was forced to concede that Crowley had a point. He bade a fond farewell to luxurious gathers and extravagant cuffs, totted up his worldly wealth (well, he did _occasionally_ part with books for money), and went forth in search of serendipitous sartorial advancement.

There was always some financially-strapped grandee who found themselves temporarily embarrassed about their bills. Which meant that there must also, at that very moment, be a put-upon tailor sitting cross-legged on his work bench, morosely putting the finishing touches to a now-unwanted suit that might, perhaps, catch the eye of a gentleman who needed something fancy at short notice.

An old-fashioned gentleman, who wouldn’t take advantage of the fact that it was obvious that there were nine yards of eau-de-nil damask in the outfit at eighteen shillings a yard (not to mention the embroidery), and that no-one else would put in an offer on the blasted thing for months, by which time the fashion would no doubt be for saffron or puce. A gentleman of medium height, with just a suggestion of _embonpoint_ , but seams could be let out a small consideration.

 _Don’t be foolish,_ thought the tailor, as he bit off a thread and scowled. _Nine yards of damask, and the waistcoat figured with apple-blossom? It’d take a bloody miracle for the two of us to find each other._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a tough chapter, I know. The next one will have a happier central scene.
> 
> Part of the reason this fic exists is because of the justly-famed [‘Demonology and the Tri-Phasic Model of Trauma: An Integrative Approach’](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20177950) by Nnm, which I recommend to anyone looking for a Good Omens fic that treats a mental health crisis seriously, while doing some lovely character work.
> 
> In the cause of research, I re-read parts of ‘The Anatomy of Melancholy’ by Robert Burton (I’d forgotten its fantastic  
> [full title](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anatomy_of_Melancholy)). It hasn’t popped up in Aziraphale’s ~~library/~~ bookshop so far, but TAoM is surely one of the works he’d consult: partly self-help, partly anecdotal research on mental illness and suicide, but mostly a Turducken of scholarship where no sooner has the reader got stuck into one subject than they find Burton has sneaked several other topics inside. And what struck me was that that this eccentric scholar described ‘Melancholy’ as ‘Epidemicall’ in 1621, and that for years after its printing, TAoM outsold even the works of Shakespeare.
> 
> A lot of Burton’s ideas are quaint or alarming (shun cabbages; consider leech therapy) but others are ahead of their time (he proposed something resembling a National Health Service, and urged that those who attempted to take their own lives shouldn’t face criminal charges). Above all, he believed that thoughts of suicide and self-harm are as much a part of the human experience as pain, and that we have to talk about them. I know that the difficulty of telling one single other person, stranger or not, is vast. All I can say I have been glad to be the confided-in person, and I have also been the person who did the confiding, and I know from both directions that there's a strange spot between fearing no-one will take you seriously, and fearing that everyone will take you far too seriously, and never give you any freedom again. On balance, I think it really is better to talk to someone.
> 
> **What time is it? It’s Too Much Research time!**
> 
> On deafness: Bamping family exists because I have a soft spot for fics where Aziraphale (and Crowley) befriend normal people, but the angel can’t just miracle life smooth for them, since that’s not part of the Ineffable Plan. I now know more than I did (previously, almost zilch) about the history of teaching the deaf, and the attempts to achieve it via writing or alphabetical signing — hampered by the fascinating snag that it’s impossible to acquire a first language through the written word. I’m still nervous about Josiah, because while this is fantasy and there’s wiggle room for how he can get by (the end of the C18 lies just on the transition from awkward, alphabet-type workarounds to actual sign language), I don’t want to commit major bloopers on a subject I frankly know little about.
> 
> A 'justacorps' is a gent’s coat, and I tip my bicorned hat to GO’s costumers, who made sure that when the French Revolution rocked up, Aziraphale’s was [at least 70 years out of fashion](https://sprior1001rcsblog.blogspot.com/2015/04/justaucorps-coat-research.html).
> 
> A link about Mrs. Anna Laetitia Barbauld, [original boss of learn-to-read books for kids](https://universityofglasgowlibrary.wordpress.com/2017/01/09/learning-to-read-with-mrs-barbauld/).


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